Tonal properties in a non-tonal language: The case of Indonesian

This study investigates the tonal properties of Indonesian, specifically examining intonation contours in Indonesian at the sentence level and focusing on how the tonal system is used to indicate different pragmatic meanings in Indonesian. Four distinct intonation contours with four distinct meanings were contrasted: strong agreement to the truth of the relevant word (emphasizing) (H), interrogative meaning (LH), doubting the fact of the word in question (L), and a neutral conceptual meaning of the relevant word (HL). The stimuli for the study were four Indonesian words (two verbs makan ‘eat’ and tahu ‘know’ and two adjectives cantik ‘beautiful’ and marah ‘angry’). Stimuli were recorded to capture the four-way contrast in pitch contour. A comprehension task to identify the distinct meanings was conducted. Forty-nine participants were asked to listen to the four words with the four different pitch contours and select their respective meanings. The data show that the participants were able to apply the Mandarin four-way contrast pitch contour to Indonesian to accurately indicate four different (pragmatic) meanings. The most difficult contour for the listeners/participants was in distinguishing the interrogative intonation contour (LH) from the low-dipping intonation contour (L) signaling doubting the conceptual truth of the lexical items used. The overall study suggests that a tonal system based on Mandarin tonal contrasts can be applied to Indonesian intonational expressions.