THE TELLTALE SIGNS OF CZECH SPEAKERS’ MOTHER
TONGUE IN THEIR ENGLISH INTONATION
THE TELLTALE SIGNS OF CZECH SPEAKERS’ MOTHER
TONGUE IN THEIR ENGLISH INTONATION
Author(s): Irena Headlandová KalischováSubject(s): Language studies, Foreign languages learning, Phonetics / Phonology, Comparative Linguistics, Western Slavic Languages
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: intonation centre; nucleus; theme; rheme; communicative dynamism; distributional field; information structure;
Summary/Abstract: Intonation, even though one of the least tangible areas of language (Underhill 1994), is brought to examination here; in particular it is the phenomenon of the most prominent prosodic peak in an utterance. This contribution presents part of the results of a comparative study of the intonation centre placement in English dialogues read by English native speakers and Czech speakers of English. The focal point of the research was to establish whether Czech speakers are able to produce intonation in accordance with the actual message of the text. The framework of the study is represented by the theory of functional sentence perspective.
Journal: Discourse and Interaction
- Issue Year: 3/2010
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 19-32
- Page Count: 14
- Language: English