Abstract

The suprasegmental feature pitch is commonly regarded as the main component of intonation (Chapter 3). A comparison of the use of pitch in tone languages, such as Chinese, and non-tone languages, such as German and English, leads not only to the clarification of intonation in these languages, but to insights into intonation systems generally. While the majority of previous studies have dealt with the intonation of isolated individual sentences, this dissertation is a preliminary investigation of how pitch is used at the discourse level. Some of the discourse functions of pitch include signalling the relationship between sentences, providing coherence and cohesion to a discourse, and conveying attitudinal meanings. The analysis in the present study focuses on interrogative utterances in dialogue. Data were collected from three groups of second language learners at the University of California, Berkeley: native speakers of Mandarin Chinese learning German, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese learning English (Chapter 4), and native speakers of American English learning Mandarin Chinese (Chapter 5). The data consist of tape recordings of (1) prestructured textbook dialogues by native speakers of the three languages being investigated, (2) repetition or reading of the same dialogues by second language learners, and (3) free conversations between pairs of learners. The recordings of the native speakers serve as the prescribed standard or norm against which the data gathered from the learners is compared. Results of the data in all three languages suggest that the pitch range or key of utterances plays a greater role than was previously believed in the intonational systems of the three languages. Specifically, key may function to signal both grammatical sentence types as well as attitudinal or pragmatic meaning. The learners demonstrate that they have acquired some measure of pragmatic competence by their independent use of pitch and key (1) to stress or emphasize words appropriately in a particular discourse, (2) to express emotional or attitudinal meanings, and (3) to attempt to constrain the other party to respond.