Acoustical Analysis of Final Question Intonation in English Foreign Learners
3. Result and Discussion
As mention before, different description of intonation have emphasized grammatical meanings, attitudinal meanings, or discourse meanings. Emphasizing grammatical meanings suggests that there are typical tones associated with syntactic structures like declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives and that discourse meanings usually associated with these structure i.e. statements, questions, and commands, will also have typical tones even when they are not marked syntactically. (Cruttenden, 1997: pp. 88)
Here, we will only discuss about the final intonation in the yes/no questions and tag- questions. In the tag questions, there two typically tone of tag which is high-falling or low-rising, e.g.
He won’t come to the party, /will \he?
He won’t come to the party,\will /he?
The falling tones (high-falling) on reversed polarity tag questions generally indicate a high expectation of agreement that the speaker is actually already know the answer yet he needs an agreement. The rising tones (low-rising), on the other hand, allow different answer. It could be indicate that the speakers are not sure about the condition and needs a confirmation. However, in the teaching of English as foreign language, the falling tones (high-falling) are commonly taught
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and used. As for yes/no questions, generally they use rising tone (/), they will be interpreted as open-ended of indefinite, usually inviting response or reaction.
Below is the native speaker intonation pattern (pitch contour) saying sentence 1 and 3 (tag- question)--“You like the idea of volunteering vacation, don’t you?” (red line) and “You’ve been on a volunteer vacation, haven’t you?” (blue line)
Figure 1. Native speaker intonation pattern of sentence 1 and 3 (tag-question)
From figure 1 we can see that the final intonation of the tag is high-falling. It has rising pitch in the word “don’t” and “haven’t” and falling in the word “you”.
Now compare to the native speaker intonation pattern saying sentence 2 and 4 (negative - yes/no-questions)—“Don’t you think it’s an interesting idea?” (red line) and “Didn’t it seem strange to pay money in order to work?” (blue line)
Time (s)
0 3.325
0 500
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.033
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.173
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
0 120 240 360 480 600
negative questions intonation patterns of native Time (s)
0 2.646
0 500
Frequency (Hz)
0 100 200 300 400
500 tag-questions intonation patterns of native
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Figure 2. Native speaker intonation patterns of sentence 2 and 4 (negative-yes/no-questions)
From the figure above, we can see that the final intonations are rising indicate yes/no questions. Even though both sentences showing different final-pitch scores, from the pattern, they show consistent rising intonation. This show that the open-ended or yes/no questions invite responds or reactions.
In reading results, all subjects seems not aware of the tag-question occurrences in the sentences they read. Below is the picture of intonation pattern of all subject reading the first sentence—“You like the idea of volunteering vacations, don’t you?”
Figure 3. Sentence 1 intonation patterns (tag-question) read by all subjects (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3-green, subject 4-purple)
Time (s)
0 3.325
0 500
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.033
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.173
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
0 120 240 360 480 600
negative questions intonation patterns of native Time (s)
0 2.646
0 500
Frequency (Hz)
0 100 200 300 400 500
tag-questions intonation patterns of native
Time (s)
0 2.712
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.339
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.852
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.911
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 1 intonation patterns of subject 1,2,3,and 4 Time (s)
0 3.275
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.235
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.258
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.417
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
0 120 240 360 480 600
sentence 2 intonation patterns of subject 1,2,3,and 4
0 120 240 360 480 600
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From the figure 3 we can see that all subjects use similar rising final intonation in reading tag-question. Only subject 4 (purple) show rather flat intonation. The three subjects seem that they were aware of the interrogative mode from the question mark at the end of the sentence but they didn’t understand the concept of tag-question final intonation. On the other hand, subject 4 seems doesn’t aware of the final sentence intonation. This also happened to the reading result of sentence 3 (also in tag question—“You’ve been on a volunteer vacation, haven’t you?”) as follow:
Figure 4. Sentence 3 intonation patterns (tag question) read by all subjects (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3-green, subject 4-purple)
From both figure 3 and 4, it can be inferred that all students are not aware of the final intonation of tag-questions since they don’t appear in Indonesian prosody and utterances. They simply follow the general rule of final intonation for questions (rising tone). This can be seen from the reading results of sentence no 2 and 4 (yes/no questions--“Don’t you think it’s an interesting idea?” and “Didn’t it seem strange to pay money in order to work?”) below.
Time (s)
0 2.856
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.554
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.698
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 3 intonation patterns of all subjects (reading)
0 120 240 360 480 600
187
Figure 5. Sentence 2 intonation pattern (yes/no question) read by all subject (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3-green, subject 4-purple)
Figure 6. Sentence 4 intonation pattern (yes/no question) read by all subject (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3-green, subject 4-purple)
The subjects’ awareness of the rising final intonation in questions are more likely to be consistent since they’ve built this awareness along with the acquiring of their first language.
Although their intonations of the sentences are not adequate yet.
Time (s)
0 2.712
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.339
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.852
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.911
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 1 intonation patterns of subject 1,2,3,and 4 Time (s)
0 3.275
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.235
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.258
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.417
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
0 120 240 360 480 600
sentence 2 intonation patterns of subject 1,2,3,and 4
Time (s)
0 3.397
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.281
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.823
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.914
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
0 120 240 360 480 600
sentence 4 intonation patterns of all subjects (reading)
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This condition is different to the imitation results. After having heard the recording of native speaker utterances, subjects attempt to imitate the intonation especially the final intonation.
Below are the figure of imitation results both in tag-questions and yes/no questions.
Figure 7. “You like the idea of volunteer vacations, don’t you?”
Intonation pattern imitated by all subjects (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3- green, subject 4-purple)
Figure 8. “You’ve been on a volunteer vacation, haven’t you?”
Intonation pattern imitated by all subjects (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3- green, subject 4-purple)
Time (s)
0 2.795
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 1 intonation patterns of all subjects (imitation)
Time (s)
0 3.066
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.698
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.293
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
0 120 240 360 480 600
Time (s)
0 2.645
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.538
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.487
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.345
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 3 intonation patterns of all subjects (imitation)
0 120 240 360 480 600
189
Figure 7 and 8 showed that subjects could successfully imitate the final intonation of the tag- questions (high-fall) after listening three times to the native speaker’s recording saying the same utterances. Here we could see the benefit of giving real-natural intonation examples to students.
Figure 9. “Don’t you think it’s an interesting idea?”
Intonation pattern imitated by all subjects (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3- green, subject 4-purple)
Figure 10. “Didn’t it seem strange to pay money in order to work?”
Intonation pattern imitated by all subjects (Subject 1-blue line, subject 2-maroon line, subject 3- green, subject 4-purple)
Time (s)
0 1.896
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 1.906
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.259
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 1.866
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 2 intonation patterns of all subjects (imitation)
0 120 240 360 480 600
Time (s)
0 2.579
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.091
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 3.129
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
Time (s)
0 2.627
0 600
Frequency (Hz)
sentence 4 intonation patterns of all subjects (imitation)
0 120 240 360 480 600
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We can see from figure 9 and 10, all subjects could maintain their consistency in producing rising final intonation in yes/no questions both in reading and imitating techniques. Another benefit of imitating techniques is that even the average students could achieve the adequate prosody feature. They seem to imitate the native speakers’ intonation pattern as well as duration of uttering the sentences. Their utterances sound more natural.
4. Conclusion
Indonesian students who learn English as foreign learners do not acquire the prosody of English as native speakers do. They need to be exposed to the natural-correct examples particularly in the matter of intonation feature. As some type of sentences, for instance tag-questions, do not appear in Indonesian sentences types. From the experimental productions, we can conclude that students are mostly do not aware of the high-fall intonation in the tag-questions and produce the similar rising intonation as in yes/no questions. This happened because of the influence of their first language prosody.
However, after listening to native speaker’s recording and practicing to imitate the same utterances, they successfully produce the adequate final intonation of tag-questions. Therefore, drilling with the natural and correct examples would be beneficial to boost students’ ability in mastering their English prosody.
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