SCOPE, PROSODY, AND PITCH ACCENT: THE PROSODIC MARKING OF WH-SCOPE IN TWO VARIETIES OF JAPANESE AND SOUTH KYEONGSANG KOREAN A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Hyun Kyung Hwang January 2011 © 2011 Hyun Kyung Hwang SCOPE, PROSODY, AND PITCH ACCENT: THE PROSODIC MARKING OF WH-SCOPE IN TWO VARIETIES OF JAPANESE AND SOUTH KYEONGSANG KOREAN Hyun Kyung Hwang, Ph.D. Cornell University 2011 This dissertation investigates the prosodic marking of the semantic scope of wh-phrases in Tokyo Japanese (TJ), Fukuoka Japanese (FJ) and South Kyeongsang Korean (SKK). While the interface between prosody and syntax in TJ has attracted intensive recent interest, the experimental approach pursued in this study addresses the issues which have not been resolved in previous research. It expands the scope of the investigation to include relatively understudied varieties of Japanese and Korean. In addition, it takes information/discourse structure into account, and it focuses on experimental verification of crucial questions such as the relationship between wh and focus intonation. The scope of wh-phrases in TJ is marked by F0 compression, exhibiting a resemblance to the prosodic pattern of a contrastive focus. In FJ and SKK, on the other hand, wh-scope is marked by a high flat F0 contour and the deletion of accents on the material inside the domain, indicating that the prosodic wh- scope marking and focus marking are distinct. Also, it is argued that the accent type of a wh-phrase determines the implementation of the prosodic scope marking: a rising tone yields the high plateau pattern whereas a falling tone yields F0 compression. Based on the characteristics of the prosodic scope marking, two i constructions are examined in which the domain of the prosodic scope marking potentially does not correspond to any syntactic constituent. Embedded scope questions with long-distance wh-scrambling have received little attention and varying claims have been made in the literature about their prosodic scope marking. The results of the investigation of this construction reveal that the right edge of the wh-scope marking aligns with the embedded complementizer regardless of the surface position of the wh-phrase. The other construction involves an in-situ wh-phrase taking matrix scope. The widely accepted wh-island effect is held to block a wh-phrase from taking scope out of a wh-island. However, the results of a production test and a comprehension test demonstrate that both pragmatic context and prosodic scope marking can ameliorate the wh-island effect, highlighting the need for an expanded scope of analysis, one which incorporates the interactivity of prosody, syntax, and information structure observed here. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Hyun Kyung Hwang was born on April 17, 1979 in Changwon, South Kyeongsang, South Korea. After graduating from Sungji Women’s High School in Masan, she attended Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea) from 1998 to 2002, where she received her degree of Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in Linguistics. She then enrolled in the graduate program in Linguistics at Seoul National University, where she completed her research project entitled “Spectral Characteristics of Frication Noise in Korean Sibilants” and received her degree of Master of Arts in 2004. Since August 2004, she has been enrolled in the graduate program in Linguistics at Cornell University. ii i For my parents and husband, with gratitude and love iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest gratitude and admiration go to my advisors, John Whitman and Abby Cohn. I am truly blessed that I have the opportunity to have these two wonderful scholars as my advisors. I would like to thank John Whitman for his invaluable advice, encouragement, and guidance. I found every single discussion with him to be incredibly valuable, whether it was held in his office at Cornell University, in a Starbucks in Tokyo, or via e-mail. I was amazed by his vast knowledge in the field of Korean and Japanese linguistics. His keen insight and interest in various aspects of language has had an enormous impact on the direction of this dissertation. My greatest acknowledgments go to Abby Cohn, who has educated me over the entire time I have been at Cornell. Beyond phonology, I have learned how to write papers, how to present my work, and how to teach linguistics from her. I greatly appreciate that she has put up with me for the past five years! Particularly for this dissertation, I enormously benefited from her extensive experience in field research and her expertise on experimental phonology. In addition to being a great linguist, she is also an extremely wise advisor. She always knew when to push, and when to wait for me. Abby prevented me from getting stuck or from deviating too far from my course. Beyond this dissertation, both Abby and John are role models for me in my academic career. I could not have started this work without the other member of my committee, Michael Wagner. This work had its beginnings in a term paper I wrote for a class of Michael’s, Prosody and Grammar, in the spring of 2006. When I mentioned my observation about wh-intonation in South Kyeongsang Korean, he immediately noticed that it was the prosodic scope marking of a v wh-phrase, and he introduced me to Ishihara’s dissertation involving the comparable phenomenon in Tokyo Japanese. Particularly, the material in Chapter 3 has greatly benefitted from his invaluable and insightful suggestions. I would also like to thank the other Cornell Linguistics faculty members whose influence directly or indirectly contributed to this dissertation. In particular, I am grateful to Mats Rooth for his valuable comments and encouragement. I am greatly indebted to the people who helped me conduct experiments in Tokyo and Fukuoka: Professor Tomoyuki Kubo and his students at Kyushu University, Professor Tadashi Eguchi at Fukuoka University, Professor Kyoko Yamakoshi at Senshu University, and Rika Aoki san at the University of Tokyo, who let me use the Lab facilities and conduct my experiments. They also helped recruit a great number of participants. I am also grateful to Professor Tomoyuki Yoshida at ICU for his encouragement and helpful suggestions. Particularly, I would like to thank professor Kubo for his invaluable comments and constant encouragement. He kindly came from Fukuoka to Tokyo for my presentation at Aoyama Gakuin University and discussed certain critical issues with me. I am also grateful to the Phonetics Lab in the Department of Linguistics, the Graduate School, and the Asian Studies Program at Cornell University for their financial support. Without their help, I could not have completed this work. I would also like to express my appreciation to Dr. Shinichiro Ishihara at the University of Potsdam and Professor Jennifer Smith at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Ishihara kindly answered my questions and gave me valuable comments and great advice on the matters in Chapter 3 of this vi dissertation. Professor Smith discussed wh-intonation in Fukuoka Japanese with me, and sent me some papers of professor Kubo’s that I could not find in the US. My appreciation also goes to professors at Seoul National University for their guidance during my studies from the beginning: Professors Ho- Young Lee, Hyun-Bok Lee, Ju-Won Kim, Yangsoo Moon, Seungho Nam, Chungmin Lee, Jae-Il Kwon, Seungjae Lee, and Hyopil Shin. They taught me not only basic linguistics but also about the excitement of doing linguistics. I am grateful to many people who made my stay at Cornell more enjoyable and fruitful. First, I owe many thanks to Hye-Sook Lee who has always helped me from the moment I stepped foot in Ithaca in 2004. A special word of appreciation goes to Jiwon Yun and Seongyeong Ko for discussing various issues about Korean linguistics with me, and for cheering me up when I needed it most. One of my classmates, Effi Georgala, deserves my sincere gratitude as she kept me company all the time in the basement of Morrill Hall. Effi, you made my time at Cornell incredibly rewarding. I would like to thank Adam Cooper and Jonathan Howell for their support and willingness to help. They proofread various documents for me with an amazing speed. I owe a great debt to Nikola Predolac, my lab pal and dissertation buddy. Thanks to his big smile and funny jokes, I was able to breathe in the window-less lab. He also provided beautiful classical music that kept me sane. Special thanks also go to Masayuki Gibson for proofreading this dissertation and giving me helpful comments. I would also like to thank all other members of the Linguistics department at Cornell. Finally, I would like to give eternal gratitude to my parents Namyong Hwang and Sunok Kim and to my brother Jimin Hwang in Korea, who vi i provided me with unbounded support and encouragement. They always cheered me up and expressed their faith in my work. I also owe thanks to my in-laws for their emotional support and care particularly during the period of my field research in Japan. Last but not least, I owe an immense debt of thanks to my husband Yasu for his support, patience, and love. He continually brought me such happiness and comfort. I owe my family and Yasu more than I can ever pay back, not only because they participated in my pilot experiments for free as native speakers of South Kyeongsang Korean and Tokyo Japanese, but also because they have always been there for me, providing me with their unconditional love and laughter. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents and to my husband. vi ii