The purpose of the paper is to describe the results of an examination of the UPTALK phenomenon among Korean learners, which is categorized by the pitch patterns made by Korean learners with Japanese and Korean sentences that have the same meaning. Cle...
The purpose of the paper is to describe the results of an examination of the UPTALK phenomenon among Korean learners, which is categorized by the pitch patterns made by Korean learners with Japanese and Korean sentences that have the same meaning. Clear similarities were demonstrated in the position and patterns of UPTALK in Japanese and Korean sentences among many of the participants. Previous researchers have also demonstrated that UPTALK among Korean learners is not a conscious language behavior and it is simply influenced by the Seoul Korean, which is known as a intonational dialect . It has also been observed that Korean learners imitate the UPTALK behavior of native Japanese speakers, especially among young females, such as when UPTALK has been observed in conversations.
My previous research (Kitano 2015) provided clear evidence that Korean learners’ UPTALK is a language behavior influenced by their mother language but not a conscious language behavior, providing evidence that Koreans learning Japanese use UPTALK for case-marking particles, while Japanese native speakers mostly use UPTALK for conjunctive particles. This supports the hypothesis that Korean learners’ UPTALK is a language behavior mainly influenced by their mother language and it is not a conscious language behavior.
The results of this additional analysis, which is described in this paper, indicate clear differences between the UPTALK patterns of Korean learners and Japanese native speakers. Korean learners use UPTALK with both Japanese and Korean sentences with clear similarities in the position and pattern of the UPTALK phenomenon, while Japanese native speakers use less UPTALK with Japanese sentences. This again supports the hypothesis that Korean learners’ UPTALK is a language behavior mainly influenced by their mother language but not a conscious language behavior with intended meaning of intonation