Vocative intonation in South Gyeongsang Korean*―A preliminary study―
Hyun Kyung Hwang †Key words： vocative、interrogative、intonation、South Gyeongsang Korean

1.

Introduction
This study investigates vocative intonation in South Gyeongsang Korean. Vocative intonation is ob-served when one person calls someone. Usually, the prosodic characteristics of vocative intonation orcalling contours are understudied in many languages including Japanese (Kubozono and Mizoguchi
2019, Kubozono 2022). Since vocative forms are often morphologically marked by a suffix –(j)a inKorean, even less attention has been paid to its prosodic patterns. This study focuses on the vocativeand interrogative intonation patterns observed in words with a falling (HL) accent based on the observation that the two intonation patterns appear to be quite similar when interacting with the falling lexical accent.
400

Let us first consider the pitch contours of a Korean name “Yun” in a declarative (1a) and in a vocative form (1b). As can be seen from the contours in Figure 1, uttered by a female speaker of South
Pitch (Hz)Gyeongsang Korean, the vocative marker is realized in an intermediate level in pitch whereas the declarative form exhibits a low tone.
(1)a. Declarative: /jun/ [jun] (윤)ju
0b. Vocative: /jun-a/ [juna] (윤아)n00.8124
Time (s)400

Pitch (Hz)Pitch (Hz)

400

ju
0

ju

n000.8124

n0a0.842Time (s)Time (s)Figure1：Pitch contours of “Yun” in the declarative (left) and the vocative form (right) uttered by afemale speaker of South Gyeongsang KoreanInterestingly, the intermediate level tone is not the only vocative intonation pattern available in thisvariety of Korean. In fact, there is another calling contour pattern observed in some utterances produced by a male speaker of South Gyeongsang Korean. A pitch contour of a vocative form by the malespeaker, together with a pitch contour of a declarative form for comparison, is demonstrated in Figure 2.
*†

本研究は JSPS 科研費 19H00530、21H00523 の助成を受けた。
筑波大学人文社会系
1

Pitch (Hz)Pitch (Hz)

Unlike the patterns in Figure
1,n the vocative
contour of this speaker isyuassociatedwitha low tone, injuana0volving an enhanced
pitch peak.
000.84200.842Time (s)300Time (s)300

Pitch (Hz)Pitch (Hz)Pitch (Hz)400

ju0jun0ju
0.85170Time (s) 0n0na00.8586

0.8124

Time (s)Time (s)Figure2：Pitch
contours of “Yun” in the declarative (left) and the vocative form (right) uttered by a
300
400

Pitch (Hz)male speaker of South Gyeongsang Korean

Pitch (Hz)

Turning to the interrogative intonation pattern, a slightly different name “Yuna” (유나) was employed. The pitch contour of the interrogative form “Yuna?” is illustrated in Figure 3 below. Notice that
this intonation pattern exhibits extremely similar tune to that of the vocative form of “Yun” shown injuna

Figure 1. The0 difference between the vocative juand nthe interrogativeforms is observed in the lengthena0

ing of the vocative marker.

Time (s) 00.8586

00.842Time (s)Pitch (Hz)

400

ju
0na

00.8476
Time (s)Figure3：Pitch contour of “Yuna” in the interrogative form uttered by a female speaker of South
Gyeongsang Korean
Yet, the perceptual similarity between the two intonation patterns—vocative and interrogative—isextremely difficult to test due to the presence/absence of the morphological vocative marker in Korean.
Thus, two personal names ‘Yun’ and ‘Yuna’ were employed in this study. Note that both names bear afalling lexical accent, and the vocative form of “Yun” is segmentally identical to “Yuna” in citation. In
other words, [juna] is ambiguous between a monosyllabic name /yun/ followed by the vocative suffix/-a/ and a bisyllabic name /yuna/ in citation.

2.

Methods
In order to test the perceptual similarity between the two apparently similar intonation patterns,

vocative and interrogative contours, a preliminary comprehension test was conducted in South
Gyeongsang Korean.
22.1

Materials and recording

Three forms—a declarative form of “Yuna” (2a), a vocative form of “Yun” (2b), and an interrogative
form of “Yuna”—were recorded. While the segmental realizations of all the three forms were identical[juna], the forms potentially exhibit distinct prosodic patterns.
(2)

a. Declarative: /juna/ [juna] (유나.)b. Vocative: /jun-a/ [juna] (윤아~)c. Interrogative: /juna/ [juna] (유나?)One female and one male speaker of South Gyeongsang Korean took part in the recording. Both wereborn and grew up in the city of Changwon, and were in their early forties. Recordings were made in aquiet office using a Marantz digital recorder (PMD 661) and a headset microphone (SHURE SM10A).
They were asked to read a word list involving the target phrases together with three fillers as naturally
as possible.
2.2

Comprehension test and participants

The three forms produced by the female speaker, and the vocative intonation pattern with the low
boundary tone produced by the male speaker were tested. The target stimuli and two fillers were presented in a random order. The entire set was tested twice, and the test was performed using GoogleDocs.
A total of twenty speakers of South Gyeongsang Korean (eleven female and nine male speakers)
participated in the test. Their age ranged from 22 to 48. Participants were asked to listen to each utterance and choose the most appropriate form for what they just heard. Three choices were provided inKorean orthography: “유나.” for declarative, “윤아~” for vocative, and “유나?” for interrogative.

3.

Results and discussion
Figure 4 shows the average percentage of participants’ responses among the three forms. When avocative form is realized in an intermediate boundary tone as in Figure 1 (V_Mid), the predominant
responses were ‘vocative (92.5%), suggesting that this intonation pattern may exclusively mark thevocative form. Yet, when it is associated with a low boundary tone as in Figure 2 (V_Low), substantial
confusions were observed between declarative and vocative forms (52.5% vs. 47.5%). This result is not
surprising since the overall shapes of the pitch contours were quite similar as shown in Figure 2. Presumably, the relatively higher peak in the vocative form alone may not be a reliable cue for participants
to interpret the utterance as vocative.
Perhaps more interestingly, the intonation pattern for an interrogative (Q) appeared to be the mostconfusing; it received only 50% interrogative responses, with 12.5% declarative and 37.5% vocative
comprehension. This considerable confusion between the vocative and interrogative forms can be attributed to the similarities observed in the pitch contours of vocative form in Figure 1 and interrogative
form in Figure 3. Still, the vocative stimulus was nearly perfectly interpreted as vocative. It is conceivable that this difference may be accounted for by the lengthening of the last syllable observed in
the vocative form in Figure 1. It should be noted that the vocative marker /-a/ exhibited substantial
lengthening compared to the last vowel of “Yuna?” in the interrogative form.
3

100
9080

% responses

7060
V_Mid
V_Low
Q50
4030
20
100
declarativevocativeintrrogative

Figure4：Mean responses (%) depending on the intonation patterns

4.

Conclusions
This paper discussed the interaction between pitch accent and post-lexical intonation patterns withspecial attention given to the vocative and interrogative pattern in South Gyeongsang Korean. The results of the comprehension study revealed that the vocative and interrogative intonation patterns wereextremely confusing to listeners if the vocative intonation involved an intermediate boundary tone. In
contrast, the substantial lengthening rendered by the morphological vocative marker may be a prominent cue for vocative comprehension.
Yet, the role of distinct boundary tones and degree of lengthening should be further tested in a morestrictly controlled experimental setting. Also, an investigation into the interaction between other accent
types and the intonation patterns is necessary in this variety of Korean.
【References】
Kubozono, Haruo and Ai Mizoguchi (2019) The Phonetics and Phonology of Vocative Intonation inTokyo Japanese, Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic
Sciences, 497-501.
Kubozono, Haruo (2022) Interactions between lexical and post lexical tones. In Haruo Kubozono, Junko Ito,and Armin Mester (ed.), Prosody and Prosodic Interfaces, 249-281. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

4