The Perception of English Intonation Patterns by German L2 Speakers of English

• DOI: 10.21437/interspeech.2017-1279
• Publication Date: 2017-08-16T02:14:46Z
• Authors: Karin Puga; Robert Fuchs; Jane Setter; Peggy Mok
• Keywords: Intonation; Sarcasm

Previous research suggests that intonation is a particularly challenging aspect of L2 speech learning.While most focuses on production, we widen the focus and study perception by learners.We investigate whether advanced German learners English have knowledge appropriate patterns in narrative context with different sentence types (e.g.statements, questions).The results tonal pattern selection task indicate (n=20) performed similar to British controls (n=25) for some yes/no-questions), but significantly worse than control group case open closed tag questions expression sarcasm.The can be explained fact are only type investigated does not exist learners' L1, sarcasm represented syntactically.This L1 influence partly account why more others, contextualized target language rather isolation crucial successful learning intonation.