A prosodic analysis of Korean in the preschool years

The present study aims to describe the prosodic characteristics of Korean in the process of first language acquisition. I analyzed the AP(accentual phrase) patterns and length, IP(intonation phrase) boundary patterns and position in utterances spoken by Korean children at 3-5 years of age. Children were asked to repeat sentences presented by the examiner. Each stimulus sentence was carefully articulated in the same prosody by one examiner. The result of this study can be summarized as follows: First, the length of APs in response to S3(the compound and complex sentence) increased by children's age. There were significant differences between 3 and 4 years of age, and between 4 and 5 years of age. Second, the AP patterns were similar to those produced by adults, but one difference was that there were phenomena that syllables were articulated separately without AP formation or tone accord in some cases. Third, the rate that the IP boundary was posited after the conjunctive endings was higher in older subjects than younger subjects. Fourth, the IP boundary contour tones(i.e., LH% or HL%) were rare occurrences and were not shown in 3 aged group. These results suggest that the ability to use prosodic unit as a means of indicating grammatical information continues to improve between the age of 3 and 5 years, and prosodic unit and patterns should be considered in evaluating children's language proficiency