This study investigates L2 comprehension of focus-to-accentuation mapping in English sentences with focus particle "only" by advanced learners of English whose L1 was either Cantonese or Dutch. Two experiments were conducted to examine (a) whether L2 learners could map accentuation to focus; and (b) whether they could perceive…

It has been proposed that second language (L2) learners differ from native speakers in processing due to either influence from their native language or an inability to integrate information from multiple linguistic domains in a second language. To shed new light on the underlying mechanism of L2 processing, we used an event-related potentials…

When it comes to paying attention to the suprasegmental features of their speech, most learners of English seem to be unaware that such phenomena as stress, pitch, duration, and pausing can be of great importance regarding mutual intelligibility. Since they carry a considerable weight of establishing an intelligible conversation, it is argued that…

Although previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of recasts on second language (L2) morphology and lexis (e.g., Li, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007), few studies have examined their effect on learners' phonological development (although see Saito, 2015; Saito & Lyster, 2012). The current study investigates the impact of recasts on the…

This study examined whether late-learning English-German second language (L2) learners and late-learning German-English L2 learners use prosodic cues to disambiguate temporarily ambiguous first language and L2 sentences during speech production. Experiments 1a and 1b showed that English-German L2 learners and German-English L2 learners used a…

Late second language (L2) learners often struggle with L2 prosody, both in perception and production. This may result from first language (L1) interference or some property of how a second language functions in a late learner independent of what their L1 might be. Here we investigate prosody's role in determining information structure through…

The present study examines the effect of cross-varietal prosodic characteristics of two German varieties, Northern Standard German (NG) and Swiss German (SG), on the production and perception of foreign accent in L2 Belfast English. The analysis of production data revealed differences in the realisation of nuclear pitch accents in L1 German and L2…

Suprasegmental elements such as "stress," "pitch," "juncture" and "linkers" are language universals that are uttered naturally in the mother tongue without prior training but need to be learned systematically in the target language. Among other techniques of "sentential pronunciation teaching" to…

This study investigated the effect of language immersion in an English-speaking environment on the production of intonational features in L2 English sentences. It was hypothesized that the Korean group who had been immersed in the English language as children would have intonation patterns more similar to native English speakers than a nonimmersed…

Considering the contradictory research on explicit teaching of suprasegmentals, the present study aims to investigate the effects of explicit instruction of L2 English learners' perception of prosodically ambiguous intonation patterns, as well as the possible effects of reported musical familiarity on intonation acquisition. A control group and a…

This study reports an exploratory analysis of the age of arrival (AoA) effect on the production of second language (L2) prosody. Three groups of Mandarin-speaking immigrants (N = 10 in each group) with varying AoA in the United States and ten native speakers of English as controls participated in the study. All participants read a paragraph of…

In second language learning, to possess a perfect pronunciation, the importance of stress and rhythm should not be ignored. This articles explores the nature of sentence and word stress as well as rhythm, thus putting forward some feasible ways of training and acquiring a good English stress and rhythm in EFLT (English as Foreign Language…

This paper reports the results of an experimental phonetic study examining pitch peak alignment in production and perception of three-syllable one-word sentences with phonetic rising-falling pitch movement by speakers of Russian. The first part of the study (Experiment 1) utilizes 22 one-word three-syllable utterances read by five female speakers…

Compelling evidence from the literature on English intonation suggests that the tone patterns of some sentence types like lists have been grossly underresearched. This undercharacterization of listing intonation in English is inferable from the paucity of literature on this topic. The main thrust of this study is to report the findings from the…

Intonation, long thought to be a key to effectiveness in spoken language, is more and more commonly addressed in English language teaching through the use of speech visualization technology. While the use of visualization technology is a crucial advance in the teaching of intonation, such teaching can be further enhanced by connecting technology…