Syntactically elliptical construction conveys the same propositional meaning as a complete sentence, regardless of their type. If reductions in sentential constituents still convey a clear message, then the corresponding changes that complement the el...
Syntactically elliptical construction conveys the same propositional meaning as a complete sentence, regardless of their type. If reductions in sentential constituents still convey a clear message, then the corresponding changes that complement the ellipsis would be indispensable for phonological aspects. Experiments have tested the hypothesis that English and Korean exhibit different prosodic qualities in stripping constructions, in terms of phonological compensation. Based on that assumption, the present study focused on stripping constructions of English and Korean from a laboratory-phonology point of view. The investigation compared and verified prosodic variations such as in fundamental frequency (F0) and duration of target vowels in XP constituents by analyzing the speech of English and Korean speakers.
To prove the hypothesis, twenty volunteers were invited to the research, divided by nationality: ten American speakers and ten Korean speakers. All of them received a script that included ten and eight sentences, respectively, of their native languages, and they were instructed to read them aloud, in order. Their reading was recorded in Audacity and pitch and duration of the recorded files were analyzed using Praat.
Results showed that the vowel length of target XP constituents in the stripping sentence was longer than its counterpart in full form in American English. Fundamental frequency (F0) of target XP constituents, on the other hand, revealed higher pitch in Korean stripping sentences than its counterpart in non-elliptical sentences.
The findings suggest that Korean and English speakers tend to make use of different prosodic features when they utter stripping constructions. This observation shows that prosody works as a parameter in syntactically elliptical construction, employing and marking different types of evidence in each language. It also supports the conclusions of previous literature that studied phonological feedback, that compensation frequently occurs for meaning disambiguation and reconstruction.