Sociolinguistic variation of the prosody of particle hoonn in Southern Min
Yiching Huang
Abstract
This paper investigates the pragmatics and intonation of particle hoonn in
Southern Min and the adults’ preference in the use of pragmatic functions when the
child was 2, 4 and 5 years old. By considering the intonation of pragmatic functions,
we found that the intonation would vary because of Li’s (1999) six different
pragmatic functions: requests for confirmation, informing-reception sequence,
backchanneling, reportings, expressive utterances and direct utterances.
To understand whether the pragmatic functions can account for the intonation
variation of hoonn, this study examined the pitch contours for particle hoonn in
discourse. The statistical results of this study show that the three functions ‘requests
for confirmation, backchanneling and expressive utterance’ favored rising intonation
while informing-reception sequence, reportings and direct utterances favored falling
intonation.
To investigate whether there is a preference in the use of functions, the study
compared the frequencies of these six pragmatic functions at the 3 age levels (2, 4 and
5). The results show that there is a preference in the adult’s use of functions
addressing the child at 3 age levels. The function of ‘direction’ was used more
frequently when the child was 2 years old and least frequently when the child was five
years old.
The findings of this study have clarified the relationship between the pragmatics
and prosody of the particle hoonn in discourse. Furthermore, a new approach to
investigating the pragmatics of particle and their interaction in Southern Min is
proposed.
Key words: Taiwanese particle, Prosody, Pragmatics, Age
閩南語助詞 hoonnup 音調的社會變異
黃意晴
摘要
本篇文章旨在探討閩南語中的語助詞 hoonn 的語用功能與音調的使用情形
及對 2 歲和 5 歲的小孩說話時，是否有偏好某些特別的語用功能。藉由檢視這些
語用功能的音調，我們發現音調會隨著不同的語用功能而改變。根據李櫻(1999)
對語助詞 hoonn 的分類，總共有六種語用功能，分別是要求確認、告知-接受的
語句組、回應、報導、表達情感的語句及指引的語句。
為了瞭解語用功能是否可以影響語助詞 hoonn 的音調改變，本文檢視了語助
詞 hoonn 在語境中的音調變化。而統計結果發現以下三種功能「要求確認」
、
「回
應」及「表達情感的語句」傾向較常使用上揚的音調；而另外三種功能「告知接受的語句組」、「報導」及「指引的語句」較傾向於使用下降的音調。
本文也探討了對不同年紀的兒童說話是否有在語用功能上有特別的偏好。根
據統計結果顯示在這三個齡層分別是 2 歲、4 歲和 5 歲時，大人在語用功能上的
確有特別的偏好。當兒童兩歲時，大人使用「指引的語句組」的頻率最高，接著
當兒童逐漸長大至五歲時，大人使用「指引的語句組」的頻率最低。
最後，根據以上的研究結果發現了語助詞 hoonn 在語用及韻律之間的關係，
也進一步提出了運用統計方式來探討語助詞的語用功能在閩南語裡與音調之間
的互動關係之新的研究法。
關鍵詞: 閩南語助詞、音調、語用、年紀
1. Introduction
Discourse analysis of Chinese particles has been well-researched (e.g., Yang 1995;
Hsieh 2000; Lee 2000). The studies of particles and interjections in Mandarin Chinese
reveal that the functions of these particles and interjections could be influenced by
internal or linguistic factors..However, very little research has focused on the
relationship between prosody and pragmatics in Southern Min in terms of a
sociolinguistic perspective, i.e., to investigate what factors account for the variation in
intonation. Li’s (1998) found that the particle hoonn may permit a range of
interpretations in different contexts from 16-hour recording of natural spoken data and
its core pragmatic function remains invariably as a negotiation marker. That is, hoonn
is a discourse marker which signals the speaker’s communication intention for
potentially necessary negotiation, which in turn is motivated by the dynamic nature of
interactional communication. However, Li’s study did not address the relationship
between pragmatics and intonation.
So far, the prosodic study that I know of has mainly concerned about the
contextual meaning of interjections with prosodic forms (Yang, 2010). Specifically,
little is known about whether the intonation variation is related to the different
discourse functions, although this relationship has been found in other languages.
According to Escudero-Mancebo & Cardeñoso (2006) , sometimes the intonation
could provide linguistic information to distinguish the sentence-type or emotional
information used to express the speaker’s emotion. Gumperz (1982) also pointed out
that intonation can serve as a contextualization cue which carries information, the
meanings of which is conveyed as part of the interactive process.
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a similar situation in
Southern Min, i.e., whether the pragmatic functions of particles would have an effect
on prosodic forms or intonation in Southern Min. The study also aims to examine the
child’s acquisition of communicative competence from the interaction with the adult.
Based on Lantolf’s (2000) sociocultural theory of language learning, child’s
development depends on the interaction with a more knowledgeable person.
2.Methods
2.1 Research Questions
The study examined two questions, the first of which is to see whether pragmatic
functions will account for the intonation variation of the Southern Min particle hoonn.
There is a specific intonation of some pragmatic function, for example, when one asks
a yes-no question in English, one usually raises the intonation of the whole sentence.
Example (1) illustrates a Chinese yes-no question with a rising intonation:
(1) Mary
是
學
生
Mary
shì
xué shēng
嗎﹖
ma?
“Is Mary a student?”
The second one is to observe whether there is a preference by the adult in the use of
pragmatic functions to address a child of 3 age levels (2, 4 and 5 years old) Although
there are six pragmatic functions, not every functions is used equally. There must be
some preference in the use of functions according to the child’s age.
2.2 Hypotheses
The use of rising or falling contours has been used to distinguish sentence types
such as statement, questions, or commands in traditional grammatical account of the
function of intonation. As Escudero-Mancebo & Cardeñoso (2006) point out that
intonation is related to various information, one of the information is linguistic
information which can distinguish interrogative or declarative sentences. Therefore,
based on this statement, the hypothesis for the first research question is as follows:
The intonation could be used to distinguish functions such as question or
statement; therefore, the functions can account for the intonation variation.
Previous studies (e.g., Church, 2000; Wittner & Petersen, 2006) show that
communication with different strategies can teach the child how to talk and learn the
pragmatics of conversation; therefore, based on these findings, the hypothesis for the
second research question is as follows:
The adults will adjust their use of pragmatic functions according to the child’s
age; therefore, there is a difference in the adult’s use of functions to address the child
at different ages.
2.3 Source of Data
There are totally 501 tokens in this study. The data analyzed came from the
Taiwanese Child Language Corpus (TAICORP) (Tsay 2007), which is a corpus of
spontaneous speech between young children and their adult caretakers in Southern
Min speaking families. The child who contributed to the corpus was recruited from a
Southern Min-speaking family in Min-hsiung Village, Chiayi County. The age range
is between 2;7 and 5;3. The adult caretakers who participated were the children’s
mother, grandmother and the two investigators of the corpus, respectively. In the case
of this study, the data of a little girl, LMC in this corpus was analyzed with a focus on
the conversation with her mother and the two investigators.
2.4 Data collection
The tools we used here are a set of professional headphones, professional
microphone and a portable mini-CD recorder to conduct the regular home visit for
children. The data were collected by Rose Huang and Joyce Liu and transcribed also
by Rose Huang and Joyce Liu. The pitch of the particle hoonn was measured by the
author, using Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2009), which is a free scientific software
program for the analysis of speech in phonetics.
2.5 Procedure
Firstly, the six pragmatic functions of hoonn were classifed according to Li’s
(1999)
study:
requests
for
confirmation,
informing-reception
sequence,
backchanneling, reportings, expressive utterances and direct utterances. The
definitions of the six pragmatic functions are presented with illustrations, as shown
below:
(1) Requests for confirmation: To request for the addressee’s confirmation.
e.g
A: 台
灣
之
聲，
Tai wan ci
siann
“The voice of Taiwan (the name of a radio show).”
B: 喂， 陳 先 生 hoonn?
Ue
tan siannsin
hoonn
“Hello, is Mr. Chen?”
A: 是。
Si
“Yes.”
(2) Informing-reception sequence: To suffix the utterance which indicates
receipt of information.
e.g
A: 我
遮
e0 票
Gua ciah
攏
你
e phio long li
的.
e
“We all will vote for you.”
B: 按呢 hoonn?
Anne hoonn
“I got it.”
(3) Backchanneling: Often occurs as a free-standing particle without being tagged
to any utterance.
e.g
A: 伊
I
咧
教
體育。
leh ka theiok
“He teaches physical education.”
B: Hoonn。
Hoonn
“Mm.”
A: 佇 台北。
Ti
taipak
“In Taipei.”
B: Hoonn。
Hoonn
“Mm.”
(4) Reportings: When a speaker is telling a story, stating his opinion, or presenting
a report.
e.g
A: 我
是
希望
想
講
hoonn，這個 節目
真
好
la，
Gua si
hibang siunn kong hoonn, citle ciatbok cin
“I just want to say, this channel is very good, ”
A: 我
是 希望 你 小可 教 一寡
台灣人
Gua si
ho
出國
la
[m
hibang li siokhua ka citkua taiwanlang chutkok
“I hope you can talk about the manner when Taiwanese
旅遊]
e [m 禮節] hoonn，….
liuyou e
lijie hoonn，…
go overseas [hoonn].”
(5) Expressive utterances: Usually to express apology, appreciation, and blessing
and so on, to make sure that the interlocutor feels the speaker’s sincerity.
e.g
A: 失禮 hoonn。
Sitle hoonn
“Sorry [hoonn].”
(6) Direct utterances: Often occurs in the guidance, suggestion and
command sentences.
e.g
A: 莫
食
傷
濟 hoonn。
Mai ciah siunn cue hoonn
“Don’t eat too much.”
Then we examined each utterance which hoonn occurs in the conversation
between the adult and the child, and according to the context of conversation, to
distinguish what kind of pragmatic function the adult used. The next step is to use
Praat to extract the pitch values of hoonn, and take three values (onset, midpoint and
endpoint) to represent the intonation of hoonn. Based on Masataka’s (1992)
measurement, the rising or falling pitch was determined.” A token pitch was judge as
rising or falling depending on whether the value of a frequency-modulation range of a
continuous slope exceeded 15 Hz in material vocalization. That is, if the difference
between the endpoint and the onset is higher than 15, it is rising. Otherwise it is
falling. The statistical procedure ‘VARBRUL’ was used to find the most parsimonious
model to account for the intonation variation. Finally, the frequencies of each function
were calculated to run a Chi-square test to see whether there is a relationship between
the frequency of adult’s use of pragmatic functions and the child’s age.
3.Results and discussion
This paper addresses whether pragmatic functions and adressee’s age will
account for the pitch variation of the Southern Min particle hoonn, and whether there
is a preference in the use of pragmatic functions among 3 age levels (2, 4 and 5 years
old). According to Li’s (1999) definition, six pragmatic functions were coded,
containing backchanneling, request for confirmation, reporting, expressive utterances,
directive utterances and informing-receiving sequence. These functions are
complementary and exhaustive. Each hoonn in one sentence has only one pragmatic
function. For example, when the speaker gives suggestion that do not eat too much to
the hearer, the words the speaker said is just a statement, it cannot be an interrogative
function simultaneously.
3.1 VARBRUL results
We used VARBRUL program, which examined whether the independent factor
groups can account for the variation in the dependent variables, to analyze the
intonation variation of hoonn. We found that the independent factor group ‘pragmatic
functions’ accounted for the intonation variation of hoonn as shown in table 1.
Table 1: Weight for the factor group ‘pragmatic function.’
Functions
Rising
Backchannel
.587*
Confirmation
.695
Reporting
.347
Expressive
.737
Informing-receiving
.402
Direct
.397
Range
.390
*Note: The probability weights above .50 indicate favoring the application rule
of intonation.
Among the six pragmatic functions of hoonn, backchanneling, confirmation and
expressive functions favor rising intonation while reporting, informing-receiving
sequences and direct utterance favor falling intonation.
According to Chun’s (1988) study, intonation is a useful tool to negotiate
meaning, manage interaction, and achieve discourse coherence. From table 1, we can
see not every pragmatic function used the same intonation. There is still some
variation in intonation. Therefore, we can infer that sometimes people use rising or
falling intonation to indicate different functions. As Escudero-Mancebo & Cardeñoso
(2006) point out that intonation is related to various information: linguistic
information (interrogative vs. declarative sentences), emotional information (the
mood of speaker), and sociolinguistic information (social and geographical origin of
the speaker), we can understand these three functions: backchannel, requests for
confirmation, and expressive utterance tend to have rising intonation of the whole
sentence to show the linguistic information (a question or a statement) or express the
speaker’s excited emotion (happy or angry).
In Yang’s (2010) study, she pointed out there is relationship between prosodic
forms and functions of interjections in Mandarin. As Mandarin and Taiwanese are
both tone languages, I believe that there is also a relationship between pragmatic
functions and forms of final-particles in Taiwanese. The particle － ‘hoonn’was
selected because it occurs frequently in Taiwanese. From table 1, we know pragmatic
functions are significant to account for intonation variation, so we can know
intonation can be influenced by internal factor (linguistic).
The three functions, i.e., backchanneling, requests for confirmation and
expressive utterances, tend to use rising intonation more than the other three.
Sometimes ‘backchannling’ uses rising intonation to display emotional stance, such as
surprise or interest (Jan Svennevig, 2004). ‘Requests for confirmation’ tends to be
expressed with the rising intonation to confirm what the child said because the adult is
waiting for an answer. Sometimes adults also use rising intonation more to express
their emotion, attempting to capture the child’s attention or get her approval.
As for the other three functions (reporting, informing-receiving sequence and
direct utterances), all of them favored falling intonation. When the adult uses the
function of ‘informing-receiving sequence’ with a falling intonation, she/he wants to
let the child know she received her information. When the speaker uses the function
of ‘reporting and direct utterance’ with falling intonation, it means she is describing
something or giving a suggestion. No response is expected from the child when the
adult used these three functions with falling intonation. That’s why these three
functions favor falling tone.
We can infer that the intonation of particle hoonn is like a kind of
contextualization cue (Gumperz 1982). Contextualization cues carry information, the
meanings of which is conveyed as part of the interactive process .There is an example
(a), the teacher is asking a question to the students:
(a) Teacher: Can you guess what does this word mean?
Student: I don’t know (with rising intonation).
sTeacher: Then, who can guess the meaning of this work?
The student uses rising intonation to give a cue which indicates further support or
encouragement. But the teacher misinterprets the contextualization cue as unwilling to
answer the question.
In the following dialogue, the adult is drawing with the child:
(b)Adult:這 1 [/] 這 1 你
家己
寫
e0
Ce
ce
li
kati sia
e
“Did you write this by yourself?”
Child:henn0 a02.
Henn a
ma0?
ma
”Yes.”
Adult:用 [m 蠟筆] 寫 e0 hoonn0? (with rising intonation.)
Iong
labi
sia e
hoonn
“Did you write it by crayons [hoonn]?”
Child: henn0, [m 藍色] e0 [m 蠟筆].
Henn
lanse
e
labi
“Yes, blue crayons.”
Here she raised her intonation of particle to give a cue to the child to give her the
confirmation. When you use the rising intonation, you are waiting for a feedback, like
the example above; however, when you give a suggestion or response with falling
intonation, you just give an instruction to the interlocutor without expecting a
response or you want the interlocutor knows you received the information. Like the
following example (c)(A stands for adult):
(c)A:你 愛 2
共
Li ai ka
hoonn0?
hoonn
伊
i
講
彼1
kong hit
是
si
啥物, a01
siannmih, a
彼1 會1
hit
e
按怎 a02,
ancuan a
“You need to tell him what that is and what could happen to it [a] [hoonn]?”
The adult simpy told the child what to do and did not expect any response from
her. In other words, she gave a statement with falling intonation. Since it is not a
question, the child did not need to respond. Therefore, the intonation here is not only a
linguistic information but also a contextualization cue.
3.2 Chi-square results
Here we used chi-square to analyze the second research question: whether there
is a preference in the adult’s use of pragmatic functions to address the child at 3 age
levels (2, 4 and 5 years old). Here, we used a Chi-square test to examine the
relationship between age and these six functions. The result shows the adult’s
preference, as shown below in Table 2.
Table 2: The standardized residual of six functions among 3 age levels.
Backchannel
Request
Direct
Expressive
Inform
Report
2 yrs old
-.1
-1.3
2.2
-1.3
.5
-.4
4 yrs old
-1.4
.5
1.2
1.4
-1.1
2.0
5 yrs old
1.4
.7
-2.9
-.2
.6
-1.5
When a standardized residual for a category is greater than 2.00 (in the absolute
value), we can conclude that it is a major contributor to the significant X2 value
(Hinkle, Dennis E., Wiersma, William, Jurs, Stephen G, 1988). From table 2, we can
see the residual of directive utterance was used more frequently by the adult when the
child was 2 years old because the adult needs to teach the child to learn to follow the
directions to accomplish individual tasks. This result supports Poole, Miller, and
Church’s (2000) finding that the young children enjoy following simple requests and
can feel good about cooperating from adults’ support.
When the child was 5 years old, directive utterance was used least. Based on
Committee on psychosocial aspects of child and family health’s (1998) study,
“As children grow older and interact with wider, more complex physical and
social environments, the adults who care for them must develop increasingly
creative strategies to protect them and teach them orderly and desirable patterns
of behavior. Preschoolers begin to develop an understanding of rules, and their
behavior is guided by these rules.”
When the child gets older, s/he will bear these rules in mind, so the adults will change
the strategies and do not need to use direction directly to the preschooler.
Based on Thompson’s (2006) and Wittner and Petersen’s (2006) thesis, Children
can acquire discourse competence and strategic competence through the interaction
with the adult and also help them become a conversational partner and a capable
communicator as Hymes (1972) pointed out ‘when to speak, when not, what to talk
about with whom, when, where, and in what manner to interact.’
3.3 Summary
When we speak, we attempt to convey the listener some quite complex
information about how we intend them to deal with the message. The common way
we use in the spoken discourse is to vary our intonation of sentence, e.g., we use
rising intonation to indicate a question or falling intonation to mean a statement. The
intonation could be a ‘contextualization cues’ (Gumperz,1982). The results of this
study indicate three of the six pragmatic functions, i.e., ‘backchannelling, request for
confirmation and expressive utterance’ tend to use rising intonation more than the
other three. In Gmperz’s (1982) chapter on ’Prosody in the conversation’, he shows
‘how conversationalists use prosody to initiate and sustain verbal encounters’. When
the adult gives the rising intonation, it means that she initiates the interaction with the
child and hopes the child to give her a response.
Children can acquire discourse competence and strategic competence through the
interaction with the adult, that is, knowing’ when to speak, when not, what to talk
about with whom, when, where, and in what manner to interact’ (Hymes, 1972). From
the statistical results, the adult has different preference in the use of pragmatic
functions to address the child at different age levels. It indicates the adult provides a
scaffolding like Lantolf’s (2000) sociocultural theory of language learning, which
originally conceived of by Vygotsky. It is suggested that child language development
depends on the interaction with people and culture to help the child acquire the
language skills and listen to the intonation to deal with the message on ‘how to
respond now’ from the interaction with the adult.
4. Conclusion
In this study, we investigated the relationship between pragmatics and prosody of
the particle hoonn in Southern Min, and also observed the adult’s preference in the
use of pragmatic functions to talk with the child at different age levels.
We found that the relationship between pragmatics and prosody is closely
connected because the intonation plays an important role in the social contexts. The
statistical results of this study show that the three functions ‘requests for confirmation,
backchanneling
and
expressive
utterance’
favor
rising
intonation
while
informing-reception sequence, reportings and direct utterances favor falling intonation.
In light of what Gumperz (1982) proposed, that is the ’contextualization cue’, which
can carry information as part of the interactive process. The adult uses different
intonation to imply that she initiates the interaction with the child and expects the
child to give her a response.
The statistical results also show that there is a difference in the use of pragmatic
functions to the child at different age levels. We found that the function
‘informing-receiving sequence’ was used more frequently when the child was 2 years
old and the adult used these two functions ‘request for confirmation and
informing-receiving sequence ’ more frequently when the child was older. When the
child grows up and becomes talkative, the caretaker would also use questions often to
stimulate the interaction. The adult’s change of pragmatic functions provides a
scaffolding for the child to acquire discourse competence and strategic competence
through the interaction with the adult.
This paper may not be adequate in presenting the relationship between the
pragmatics and prosody of the particle hoonn in Southern Min and the situation of the
preference in the use of pragmatic functions between the adult-child’s interactions
because the data is neither sufficient nor representative. However, it has provided
some evidence to confirm that intonation is an important strategy to elicit the
interaction in the discourse. For future research, we can investigate how and when the
child acquires the functions of intonation from the interactions with the adults.
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