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<Paper uid="W02-0202">
  <Title>The Prosodic Transcription of a Corpus of Hong Kong English: Collection Criteria, Transcription System and Preliminary Findings</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Our Data
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Spoken discourses between native speakers of English and Hong Kong Chinese have been recorded as a first step to build up the Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (HKCSE). The HKCSE is divided into four sub-corpora: conversations, business discourses, academic discourses and public discourses. Each sub-corpora consists of 50 hours of naturally-occurring discourses. The participants are monitored in terms of age, gender, nationality, occupation, educational backgrounds and residence overseas.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
3 The Transcription System
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Data collected are first orthographically transcribed. The intonation system proposed by David Brazil (1997) known as the Brazil System is being used for the prosodic transcription of data manually. This is a discourse-based system that suits our need of describing Hong Kong intonation along with discourse features. Below are the labels adopted from the Brazil System of intonation: Prominence: Capitalised letters Tone: p (fall), r (fall-rise), p+ (rise-fall), r+ (rise), o (level), u (unfinished utterances) Key and termination: hl and ll, stands for high key /termination and low key/termina-tion respectively Tone unit boundaries: // Prominence refers to the stressed syllables. Tone is the tonic or nucleus in a tone unit (i.e. the last prominent syllable of a tone unit), and either the letters are capitalised or underlined, the latter is for cases in which more stressed syllables follow the tonic. Key and termination refer to the key of the first stressed syllable and the tonic respectively. Philadelphia, July 2002, pp. 11-14. Association for Computational Linguistics. Proceedings of the Third SIGdial Workshop on Discourse and Dialogue, A system for computer labelling has also been developed: Fig 1. Computer speech file of sample conversation between a male native speaker and male non-native speaker The program used for the purpose of computer transcription is 'xwaves', a package developed as a research tool for all kinds of acoustic analysis. The recording process is followed by this computer labelling using Brazil's paradigm along with the orthographic transcription. As can be seen from the above speech file, orthographic transcriptions are put in alternate columns, with the intonation notations above. Only the capitalised onset syllable (the first prominent syllable of the tone group) and the tonic (indicated by p, p+, r, r+ or o) of each tone unit are inserted.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Statistical analysis has also been carried out for part of the conversation sub-corpus of conversations:  It can be seen that there is a dominant use of the level tone o and proclaiming tone p among Hong Kong speakers of English. Contrast is also seen in the use of the referring tone r between the two parties. Native-speaker data show more instances of the referring tone. Another referring tone r+ has more or less the same frequency of occurrence in the two different sets of data. All these will be viewed along with representative examples extracted from the data concerned in the sections that follow.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="5" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Description of Tone Choices
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In Brazil's (1997) system of native-English intonation, R and P stand for the referring and the proclaiming tone respectively. They are further subdivided into r and r+ (for R), and p and p+ (for P).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> A: What will you do on your day off? B: // r WHEN i've prepared my LECture // r if there's any TIME left // p i shall GO into TOWN // r and AFter THAT // p it will dePEND on the WEAther // p perHAPS i shall play TENnis// r if its FINE // r and if there's anyone aROUND // r OTHerwise // p i'll WRITE some LETters // (Brazil 1997:73) This example shows the use of a fall-rise r to indicate negotiated information/assumed common ground, and p to signal new information. This stands for the P/R opposition proposed by Brazil (Brazil, 1997).</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="6" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
5. Preliminary Findings
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Preliminary results from the conversation sub-corpora show that the level tone is dominant and is used in almost half of the tone units. Below is a  p ER how i STRUCture MY WORDs // At points where the speaker is obviously signaling shared information, or information already present in the consciousness of the two parties (e.g. conversation, ordinary conversation, in one sentence), the speaker uses the level tone o instead of the referring fall-rise r.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The use of proclaiming tone is also dominant.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> The next example presents us with a series of falls (p): a: // o beCAUSE // r IN PRINciple // p we should ASK the conTRACtor // p PROject conTRACtor // p the MAIN conTRACtor // o to DO it// p to TOUCH up ALL THESE FAULTs // The &amp;quot;contractor&amp;quot; mentioned in the above chunks should be understood as already present in the consciousness of the hearer, for the conversation parties have been discussing construction matters. Subsequent &amp;quot;contractors&amp;quot; would become old information which should be used with a referring tone according to Brazil. But here they are all said with a proclaiming tone p.</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
5.1 The Intonation of Questions
</SectionTitle>
      <Paragraph position="0"> It is claimed by Brazil that when native English speakers echo what they have just heard or ask to have an assumed common ground confirmed or refuted, they use either a fall p or a rise r+. Below are examples from the Hong Kong English data: (a:  Preliminary results show that Hong Kong speakers use both p and r+ in asking questions as native speakers do.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> Further, we have examined examples of yes/no questions and information questions. This time the P/R opposition in terms of information status comes into play. According to Brazil (1997), p is used when the question content is not yet the negotiated common ground. On the other hand, r and r+ are used when the question is put forward as a presumed assumption. Some examples of the transcribed data are as follows (Q stands for &amp;quot;genuine questions&amp;quot;, meaning the speaker is asking for information unknown to him/her:  that is the (.) LIKE er INStitutional BUILdings is it // a: // r+ WORK DOing IN // r+ DOing FOR // o you MEAN // b: // r+ your GOOD friend // a: // r+ IT'S BETTER //  One point worth noting is the fact that speakers tend to use a fall p more often in Wh-questions. This is in line with Brazil's (1997) proposal that this type of question is asked using a fall because the speaker has no idea about the answer. A rise r+ is associated with a considerable number of questions that carry presumed assumptions.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2"> However, as a general picture, it is not yet clear whether Hong Kong speakers actually manipulate the P/R opposition in asking questions as native speakers do, since we do have instances of both the P and R tone within the same category of questions. This matter is further complicated by the overwhelming use of level tones (Please refer to table 1 above) which are frequent in questions as  Use of the fall rise r is emphasised particularly by Brazil (1997) as a means to indicate a presumed common ground in asking questions. But r rarely occurs in our Hong-Kong-speaker data. The proclaiming tone p and the rising tone r+ are the dominant tones for questions.</Paragraph>
    </Section>
  </Section>
  <Section position="7" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Preliminary results suggest that Hong Kong speakers do use the full variety of tones in speaking English. However this pattern of usage seems to differ from that of NS (e.g. r is much rarer and the level and proclaiming tones are dominant). They seem to manipulate the choice in the same way as native speakers in some of the sub-categories (e.g. Wh-questions). However, we have yet to establish whether Hong Kong speakers make the same conscious distinction between p and r. NNS's frequent use of r+ in questions, for example, may be due to a non-native speaker intuition that a rise is the normal &amp;quot;question tone&amp;quot; in English. Also, if future results reveal that there is an overwhelming use of a fall p and a level o in whatever situation, then we have no reason to believe that there exists a native-like distinction.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> On top of the main concern regarding whether Hong Kong Chinese speakers deviate from native speakers in terms of the use of tones (and if so, how), it will be interesting to investigate also whether Hong Kong Chinese speakers have developed a Hong Kong English intonation system.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> If so, it will better inform us the way to design teaching materials geared towards discourse intonation in English.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
  <Section position="8" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="metho">
    <SectionTitle>
Acknowledgements
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administration</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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