{"id":919,"date":"2010-08-01T22:00:40","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T20:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=919"},"modified":"2010-07-22T14:40:05","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T12:40:05","slug":"a-corpus-driven-study-of-discourse-intonation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=919","title":{"rendered":"A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation"},"content":{"rendered":"
A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation: <\/strong>The Hong Kong corpus of spoken English (prosodic). By Winnie Cheng<\/strong>, Chris Greaves<\/strong>, <\/strong>and Martin Warren<\/strong>. (Studies in corpus linguistics 32.) <\/strong>Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. ix, 325 (incl. CD-Rom). ISBN 9789027223067<\/a>. $158 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Thomas Hoffmann<\/strong><\/a>, University of Regensburg <\/em><\/p>\n

Comprising more than 900,000 words, the Hong Kong corpus of spoken English (prosodic; HKCSE) is the first major corpus of authentic, naturally-occurring speech in which all utterances have been analysed within David Brazil\u2019s discourse intonation system. Now Winnie Cheng, Chris Greaves, and Martin Warren provide an in-depth introduction to the corpus and present a great number of preliminary findings. Additionally, the accompanying CD contains the prosodically transcribed corpus together with iConc, a special software program for querying the corpus.<\/p>\n

Ch. 1 (1\u201310) begins with information on the composition of the HKCSE (including the text types sampled as well as information on the first language (L1) status of the recorded speakers\u2014namely, Hong Kong second language [L2] vs. native L1 speakers). Then, in Ch. 2 (11\u201330), an overview of discourse intonation theory is provided that discusses the four levels of analysis of Brazil\u2019s approach: (i) prominence (i.e. prominent vs. nonprominent syllables), (ii) tone (i.e. rise-fall, fall, rise, fall-rise, level), (iii) key, and (iv) termination (both key and termination are characterized by the parameters high, mid, and low). Ch. 3 (31\u201339) outlines the orthographic and prosodic transcription methodology adopted for the corpus, while Ch. 4 (41\u201360) is a short manual to the iConc concordancing program.<\/p>\n

After these background chapters, the remainder of the book provides more detailed analyses of the realization of the various discourse intonation levels in the corpus. First Ch. 5 (61\u201383) deals with size of tone units, then Ch. 6 (85\u2013123) outlines the distribution of prominent syllables in tone units across text types and speakers (e.g. there is a tendency for Hong Kong L2 speakers to use more single prominence tone units than native speakers). Next, Ch. 7 (125\u201359) focuses on tone choice in the HKCSE (prosodic). Among the many findings discussed, C, G,&W stress, for example, the prevalence of level tones in all of the subcorpora (with L2 speakers employing this tone choice even more often than native speakers). Finally, the referring and proclaiming use of tones as well as the assertion of dominance and control in discourse via tone choice are examined in this chapter.<\/p>\n

Ch. 8 (161\u201391) looks at the distribution of key and termination in the HKCSE (prosodic), investigating issues such as the contrastive and particularizing use of high selections or the phenomenon of pitch concord. Finally, Ch. 9 (193\u201397) provides a brief summary of the main findings as well implications for future research and language teaching. Additionally, there is an appendix (207\u2013318) that contains references to all of the previous publications on the HKCSE (prosodic) as well as several tables with descriptive statistical information on the quantitative occurrence of the various discourse intonation elements.<\/p>\n

This well-written volume provides an accessible introduction to discourse intonation and discusses a wealth of prosodic data from the HKCSE (prosodic). However, it is hoped that future releases of the corpus will not only contain orthographically annotated transcriptions but will also allow researchers access to the original sound files.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A corpus-driven study of discourse intonation: The Hong Kong corpus of spoken English (prosodic). By Winnie Cheng, Chris Greaves, and Martin Warren. (Studies in corpus linguistics 32.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. ix, 325 (incl. CD-Rom). ISBN 9789027223067. $158 (Hb). Reviewed by Thomas Hoffmann, University of Regensburg Comprising more than 900,000 words, the Hong Kong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}