The pragmatic function of intonation in L2 discourse: English tag questions used by Spanish speakers

Abstract

The present article discusses the pragmatic role of intonation in crosscultural interactions. It investigates whether the choice of tone and pitch accent in the spoken discourse produced by Spanish learners of English can lead to deficient appropriateness, a concept that can be defined as the choice of ''the most adequate element-where element is understood at any linguistic level-in the realization of a certain function in a specific context'' (Romero Trillo 2001: 531). The study analyzes short read-alouds and Spanish learners' spontaneous conversations and compares them to native English speakers' production in order to interpret the pragmatic meaning expressed by their intonation patterns (cf. Benson et al. 1988; Halliday 1994;Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg 1990). A cross-linguistic corpus was compiled by recording native and non-native speakers who performed short dialogues in English. The corpus data were analyzed and annotated in order to obtain detailed and quantitative comparable information on the two language user groups' prosodic characteristics. The results reveal the existence of significant di¤erences in the choice of the tone and pitch accent by nonnative and native English speakers in similar contexts. These di¤erences may cause communicative misunderstanding.

Style, indexicality, and the social meaning of tag questions

“…One potentially salient phonological feature of tag questions not considered here is intonational shape. Although many scholars have taken note of the pragmatic importance of intonation to the interpretation of tag questions (Ladd 1981, Millar & Brown 1979, Ramirez Verdugo & Romero Trillo 2005, examining the intonation of tag questions can be accomplished only once the meaningful tunes -for this particular variety from northwest England -are catalogued. Cruttenden 2001 contends that the intonational system of a very closely related variety, the Mancunian dialect, presents a particular problem for standard systems of intonational representation.…”

Prosodic Transfer in Learner and Contact Varieties

“…In strictly realizing yes-no questions with a falling pitch movement (HL%), independent of the pragmatic value of the interrogative in question (i.e., neutral or biased; see Gabriel et al, 2010 ), Porteño appeared to have generalized one of the possible interrogative patterns from Italian. Additionally, previous research done on the L2 acquisition of yes-no and wh -questions containing specifi c pragmatic meanings has shown that learners generally have diffi culties acquiring intonational features related to semantics (see Jun & Oh, 2000;Ramírez Verdugo & Romero Trillo, 2005). As reported in the Results section, some of the learners produced a falling contour, thus showing possible transfer from L1 Italian, whereas others realized a fi nal rise (H%) at the end of the yes-no question; this partly corresponded to the situation in the target language, which consistently used a fi nal rise for (neutral) absolute interrogatives.…”

Corpus Pragmatics and Second Language Pragmatics: A Mutualistic Entente in Theory and Practice

“…This changes the traditional notion of tonicity and introduces the genre aspect by which it could be said that tonics will also convey ''given'' information in pedagogic discourse. In the case of the realisation of tones in question tags, Ramírez- Verdugo and Romero-Trillo (2005) proved that non-native speakers use rising tone similarly to native speakers when the tag questions express uncertainty. However, they overgeneralize this rising tone also to tags where a falling contour would be required to accomplish the intended message.…”