Information Status and Prosodic Prominence as Perceived by Korean Learners of English

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between information status and prosodic prominence perceived by Korean learners of the English language, compared to English native speakers, in a complete public speech. Both groups of speakers were asked to mark words that they perceived as being prominent, while listening to a speech in real time. The information status of a word was annotated as a function of referential and lexical information, as well as focus. The results show that Korean native speakers perceive prosodic prominence in a similar manner to that of English native speakers. Both groups are more likely to perceive prominence for new or focused words than for given or non-focused words. The two groups, however, differ in that Korean native speakers tend to more frequently perceive prominence for words carrying lexical information than English native speakers. This bias seems to be influenced by parts-of-speech, in alignment with the findings of previous studies.