PHONETIC FOCUS-MARKING IN KOREAN-SPEAKING 7- to 8-YEAR-OLDS AND ADULTS

Abstract

This study investigates how Seoul Korean-speaking children and adults use pitch- and duration-related phonetic cues to mark focus. It was found that to distinguish focus from non-focus, the adults used both the pitch- and duration-related cues, but the children used only the duration-related cues to distinguish focus from post-focus. Further, neither the adults nor the children distinguish narrow focus and broad focus via any of the phonetic cues. However, while the adults did not distinguish contrastive focus from (non-contrastive) narrow focus phonetically, the children distinguish these two using duration in the ‘short’ words.