Perception of English intonation by native speakers and second language learners
Hyekyung Hwang Department of Linguistics, McGill
Abstract
Previous research has shown that advanced Korean learners of English (L2ers) use intermediate phrases (ips) less effectively than native speakers (L1ers) to recover English syntactic structure. This study examined whether the effect is due to perceptual differences between English L1ers and Korean L2ers. In an AX discrimination task, intonational contour of English utterances crossed with boundary strength. The results showed highly correlated discrimination patterns between the two language groups. The falling-level contour contrast was more salient than the rising-level contrast (in the context tested) and contour contrasts were more salient than boundary strength contrasts. This suggests that the L2ers' poor use of ips in comprehension is likely due to difficulty with prosody-syntax mappings.
