perception and comprehension of L2 English sentence types

Abstract

L2 prosody is particularly difficult to acquire, because it requires an understanding of intonation, syntax, and pragmatics. For example, to acquire English sentence types, speakers must learn that statements (Ss) and absolute yes/no questions (AQs) are syntactically and prosodically marked, whereas the difference between Ss and declarative questions (DQs) is purely prosodic. Moreover, DQs can only occur in restricted contexts, such as to express surprise. In this paper, we examine the L2 perception and comprehension of English sentence types, by speakers of three typologically distinct L1s (Spanish, Mandarin, Inuktitut), with the goal of investigating the role of crosslinguistic influence (CLI). Spanish uses only intonation (a higher initial pitch accent and final rising boundary tone) to distinguish Ss from AQs and DQs, whereas in Mandarin, questions (AQs and DQs) can be syntactically identical to statements or marked by the lexical particle –ma. Mandarin also has a prosodic distinction between broad focus and echo questions (which are similar to English AQs and DQs). In contrast, Inuktitut has a very restricted use of pitch, and primarily marks questions morphologically. Learners of each L1 and English controls performed three tasks that varied in the amount of contextual and linguistic information available. Our results revealed evidence of both positive and negative CLI. Inuktitut and Mandarin speakers demonstrated some tendencies to focus more on syntax than intonation. Moreover, the Mandarin speakers were the most successful at acquiring the pragmatic distinction between AQs and DQs, which we argue is due to a similar contrast in Mandarin.

Perception and Production of Sentence Types by Inuktitut-English Bilinguals

“…These studies, however, did not explore whether access to contextual information was responsible for the differences observed. Studies that have examined the role of access to contextual information have yielded consistent results both in perception (Grabe et al 2003;Radu et al 2018;Patience et al 2020) and perception-production (Ortega-Llebaria and Colantoni 2014). Grabe et al's (2003) pioneering study showed that three groups of English, Mandarin and Peninsular Spanish speakers did not differ in their discrimination of falling and rising contours in non-speech stimuli (i.e., frequency modulated sine-waves), but differed in their perception of falling contours when they listened to the utterance Melanie Maloney (whose final syllable was manipulated to generate 11 different stimuli with rising and falling contours) produced by a Scottish English speaker.…”

“…CLI was restricted to the interpretation of the different question types (see Section 2.2). Finally, Patience et al (2020) found that L1 Mandarin speakers could use intonation to identify questions from statements in a low-pass filtered task; however, when the statements were presented as isolated utterances (not low-pass filtered), the L1 Mandarin speakers had difficulty distinguishing between Ss and DQs, suggesting that they paid more attention to the syntax than the intonation. The authors interpreted this as evidence of CLI, given that Mandarin yes-no questions are marked more reliably with syntax than with prosody.…”

“…They found that learners did not differ from controls in tasks that tapped auditory processing, but they diverged from controls in contextualized tasks in which they had to choose the sentence type that appropriately completed a given context. Patience et al (2020), which was based on the same methodology as Radu et al (2018), found that Mandarin speakers behaved similar to controls, outperforming L1 Spanish speakers. As mentioned, the relative success of the L1 Mandarin speakers was attributed to positive CLI, given that Mandarin also contrasts prosodically between AQs and DQs.…”

“…Closer to our study are investigations that have analyzed the role of CLI in the perception of sentence types in early and late bilinguals. These studies have used a variety of methodologies, such as gating paradigms (Marasco 2020), identification tasks (Radu et al 2018;Patience et al 2020) or imitation of resynthesized stimuli (Zárate-Sández 2015) and have yielded mixed results. L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers were the focus of two studies (Zárate-Sández 2015; Marasco 2020).…”