Intonation in Thai

An attempt has been made in this thesis to look at intonation as pitch contours of information units. Each information unit has one intonation, which is the product of many interrelated systems: (a) phonological accents of the words composing the information unit realized as rhythmical variation of stressed and unstressed syllables; (b) the syntactic and pragmatic structure of the information unit in relation to other information units of an entire speech realized as variation of pause and prominent stressed syllable placement; and (c) the two systems of pitch fluctuation, namely, the tone which is the inherent property of the syllable used to convey word meaning and the tune which is the property of an utterance used to convey syntactic and attitudinal meaning. The thesis consists of-five chapters. Chapter I deals with the theoretical problems concerning the study of intonation in tone languages, and those problems particular to Thai. This is followed by the author's suggested solution. An overview of Thai phonology, morphology, and syntax which is needed for the discussion in later chapters is given to help readers unfamiliar with the Thai language. Chapter II describes the accentual system or the phonological system of potential stress placement restricted to the lexical level. This chapter is essential for the understanding of rhythmical variation and pitch fluctuation caused by stresses in real speech. The accentual system of monosyllabic words, monomorphemic polysyllabic words, compounds, and different types of reduplicative particular to the Thai language is given. The description suggests that words in Thai have a favoured accentual pattern i.e. the double accented pattern. Although the primary accent is always assigned to the final syllable of a word, the assignment of the secondary accent varies according to the types of word. Chapter III which is a study of the tonal behaviour of one-word utterances, attempts to find answers to the following questions. what is the behaviour of the five contrastive tones when different intonations are superimposed on them? Does the system of intonation contaminate the system of tone? How many contrastive intonation contours or 'tunes' are there in Thai? Are there universal 'Falls' and 'Rises'? The answers to these questions are drawn from experiments on one-word utterances with different syntactic functions and different attitudinal meanings elicited from three subjects. The cue-card technique, which is the combination of the reading and questioning method of elicitation, is used. Both acoustic and auditory analyses are done to give the clearest view of the interrelationship between tone and intonation. Chapter IV describes intonation in Thai connected speech. The author divides speech into units of information using phonetic, syntactic, and pragmatic cues. Each information unit is a unit of intonation or a 'tone group'. A tone group is divided into units of rhythm or 'feet'. A foot is divided into stressed and unstressed syllables. There are five sections in this chapter. The first section is a phonetic analysis of connected speech in terms of pause-defined units and prominent stressed syllables. The second section is the phonological postulation of intonation units. Section 3,4, and section 5 are a description of Thai intonation in terms of 'tonality', 'tonicity', and 'tune' contrasts respectively. Chapter V deals with 'stylized intonation' which has definite phonetic characteristics i.e. pitch levelling and lengthening of duration. This intonation conveys the core meaning of the utterances in terms of stereotype and predictability. The study covers both stylized forms of speech such as chanting, recitation, calling, etc. and nonstylized forms of speech such as normal conversation and reading

Enhancing Learner Autonomy in Rural Young EFL Learners through Project-Based Learning: An Action Research

Learner Autonomy (LA) is acknowledged as being beneficial to EFL education, particularly in rural areas where resources are scarce. However, LA enhancement should be implemented with careful consideration to the context. Based on our previous study (Pichailuck & Luksaneeyanawin, 2015), young rural EFL learners are ready and willing to adopt LA, yet they are rather unfamiliar with its practices. The research described in this article aims to evaluate how Project-Based Learning (PBL) can enhance LA by utilizing existing resources. In this study, ten sixth graders from a rural school in Northeastern Thailand were sampled in a focus group for an in-depth qualitative study. Research strategies such as field notes, interviews, Focused Group Conversations (FGCs), diaries, observations and assignment analysis were used. The results showed that all students were receptive to PBL and LA enhancement. The national standardized achievement test, ONET 2015, showed higher average scores for all grade 6 students accustomed to PBL. The ten students in the focus group also showed higher scores. This was the first time in three years that the school’s average ONET scores were higher than the national average. Therefore, it was concluded that through PBL, rural teachers could make the most of existing resources to gradually enhance LA in young EFL learners which leads to higher academic achievement

The influence of second language experience in the pattern of language processing of the bilingual lexicon

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A comparison of the expression of simultaneity in Thai and English adults and children using short animations

The aim of the present study was to investigate the linguistic devices that Thai and English children aged 4 years, 5 years, 6 years, 7 years and adults use to express simultaneous or overlapping temporal relations depicted in short animations. Thai has imperfective aspectual morphemes but they are not morphologically grammaticalised on the verb and usage in general is optional and not obligatory. These particular aspectual characteristics of Thai form an interesting comparison with English, which has obligatory grammaticised aspectual marking on the verb. An additional aim is to investigate if these grammatical differences and degrees of obligatoriness of aspectual marking in English and Thai affect what particular aspects of the external simultaneous events depicted in the animations are expressed, and if so, do children and adults show the same language-specific patterns

Language socialization of the child through caretaker-child personal narratives : a comparison of Thai and English

The present study reports preliminary findings on the elicitation strategies used by Thai and English caretakers when eliciting past event narratives from preschoolers. Ten Thai and ten English-speaking caretaker-child dyads were recruited from Bangkok, Thailand and from Sydney, Australia. Caretakers were asked to elicit past event narratives from their children and the three best narratives were selected for analysis. Elicitation strategies used by caretakers were coded into various categories based on McCabe and Peterson (1991), Minami (2002) and Chang (2003). Results revealed common and culture-specific strategies. English-speaking caretakers in general provided more information, requested more evaluation, expressed more agreement and approval, revised and corrected children, whereas Thai caretakers used more contextual, temporal information. Results are discussed in terms of educational implications and future research directions