This research is an empirical analysis of prosodic variations appearing as registers of announcements on sociophonetics view. For the purpose of the research, speech speed, pitch ranges, melody curves of intonation phrase(IP) and pauses displayed in ’Urban Rail Announcement’ were measured and normalized for comparison with normal declamation sound.
The results found little differences between speakers and displayed a regular pattern. Expect ’emergency(with high pitch)’ and ‘civil complaints(With slow speed)’, Announcements showed regular pitch ranges and speech speed with little differences among different purposes of speech.
Announcements displayed more frequent use of pauses than normal declamation and are categorized into three types depending on their position within sentences for comparison. Pauses between coordinate clauses(P1) play a role in grouping and phrasing of elements in sentences in terms of units of meaning. Pauses appearing between repetitive words(P2) and pauses appearing between listed words(P3) are realized in longer lengths playing the role of emphasizing the following words. The lengths of P2 were longer than P3 confirming the importance as P2(repetition) > P3(listing) > P1(phrasing). Boundary tones in prosodic phrases in front of P2 showed a pattern of descending(F) with a variance of -23.2 quarter tone(QT) with a 90% chance.