[DOI: 10.17959/sppm.2025.31.2.183] 

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Prosodic and other expressive cues to semantic valence in Korean nemu

Eon-Suk Ko (Chosun University)

Abstract 

This study investigates the prosodic correlates of semantic prosody by examining the Korean degree adverb nemu [nəmu] ‘very’. Although nemu is semantically neutral, it frequently co-occurs with adjectives of either positive or negative valence, which may result in affective prosodic coloring. Building on observations that speakers produce  nemu with varying prosodic features depending on the valence of the modified word, we ask whether such variation serves as a cue to semantic valence. Drawing on data from two spontaneous speech corpora that differ in formality, the Call Friend Korean corpus and the Seoul Corpus, we analyze whether prosodic, morphological, and paralinguistic features (accent, reduplication, expressive lengthening, and laryngealization) predict the valence of the adjective modified by nemu. The results suggest that the realization of nemu, particularly its prosodic features, is indeed sensitive to semantic valence, with these effects more pronounced in informal speech. These findings highlight the role of prosody in conveying not only structural but also semantic information in discourse, and they contribute to a broader understanding of how affective meaning is encoded in spontaneous speech. 

Keywords 

semantic prosody, paralinguistic features, prosodic prominence, speech register