Week 4: Chun (1998) and Intonation Training

In her 1998 article, Chun discusses computer-assisted intonation training and possible design implementations for future software. Intonation training is something that has been (and continues to be?) overlooked in language classes. Intonation was never addressed in any language classes I attended. A major obstacle for teaching intonation is the ability to fully comprehend intonation patterns in the given language. Even teachers who are native speakers may not be conscious enough of these patterns to be able to teach them to their students. As Chun pointed out, intonation was not previously well understood in linguistics or applied linguistics. Within functional linguistics, which looks at discourse and natural speech, the intonation unit is the relevant domain for these pitch patterns. The size of the intonation unit differs from language to language, so an intonation unit does not necessarily correspond with a clause or a sentence. Therefore, in certain languages, a single utterance can have multiple intonation units. That being said, when using software for intonation practice, the assumption is that grammatically meaningful units will be presented to learners. However, it can't be assumed that intonation units are going to correspond with a single word, clause, or sentence. This means that for some languages, meaningful units of intonation will not always correlate with meaningful units of grammar. Does this matter at all for intonation training software? Do language learners need to be aware of this, consciously or unconsciously, to acquire native-like intonation? Perhaps not, but language specific intonation patterns need to be taken into account when selecting a training method, computer-assisted or otherwise.