The interface of information structure and unmarked intonation pattern: A comparative study of English and Persian

The issue of unmarked intonation pattern in English has always baffled non-native (or even native) ES/FL teachers and students as to how intonation changes both inter- and intrasententially. This may partially be accounted for in terms of Halliday s (1994) and Collins (1995) notion of Information Structure. However, almost all novice language learners are bereft of such specialist knowledge. The present paper looks into this issue from both theoretical and experimental perspectives and attempts to identify sources of such incompetence. It draws upon the previous literature and discusses the experimental study conducted for this paper on the acquisition of unmarked intonation pattern by 60 Persian senior students of English at AUCB (Azad University Central Branch) to see how close their performance would fall to the native speakers vis-a-vis the intonation pattern. A set of 60 utterances representing 17 types of the English moods was given to the subjects to read out as their voices were recorded. Using SPSS, a Chi-square was conducted to measure the frequency of correct and incorrect responses. The results are discussed and suggestions made.