Abstract
Eight native speakers of English from four countries (England, the U. S., Canada, and Australia) uttered 10 sets of 26 semantically ambiguous sentences used in earlier studies on English intonation and location of nucleus, and the contours of the overall utterances and of the sentence nuclei were carefully identified and examined using sound analyzing software ‘Onseirokubunken.’ The examination found the following tendencies: the choices became nuclei in alternative questions; a pause was inserted before “or” in alternative questions; sentences with the structure“All...not” meaning partial negation ended with falling tone; sentences with the structure “not...all” meaning partial negation ended with falling-rising tone; the preceding focus had a greater prominence in cleft sentences having two foci; and so forth. In comparison with the description in the earlier studies, the overall rate of concordance of intonation pattern was 62% and that of the nucleus was 56%.
