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Teaching and learning L2 Spanish intonation Lluïsa Astruc The Open University & The University of Cambridge
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Teaching and learning L2 Spanish intonation

Feb 24, 2016

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Teaching and learning L2 Spanish intonation. Lluïsa Astruc The Open University & The University of Cambridge. Introduction: prosody & intonation. Intonation belongs to the suprasegmental level of language (also called prosody) Units of prosody (‘ prosodic structure ’) - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Department of Languages

Teaching and learning L2 Spanish intonationLlusa AstrucThe Open University & The University of CambridgeIntonation belongs to the suprasegmental level of language (also called prosody)Units of prosody (prosodic structure)segments > syllables > feet > words > phrasesProsodic sub-systems:IntonationStressnima, anima, anim [anima, anima, animo]RhythmIntroduction: prosody & intonation2Phonetics and phonologySyntax, semantics, pragmaticsYour opponents talk, honestlyYour opponents talk honestlyLanguage acquisitionLiteracy acquisitionProsodic deficit hypothesisReading comprehensionIntroduction: prosody & intonation3

Fundamental frequency and pitchPitch accents are...Boundary tones are

IntonationTwo tonal boundaries, both low (L), after ready and announced.

No pitch accents in my mother announced.4Grammatical functionQuestion vs. statement, yes-no vs. wh-question,Pragmatic (attitudinal) functionSpeakers attitude, point of view,Discourse functionInformation marking (old vs. new information), turn-taking,...Paralinguistic and sociolinguistic functionsEmotions, group identity,

(see Chun 2002 for an overview )

Functions of intonationImproving:ComprehensionSegmentation and lexical retrievalGrammatical function, pragmatic meaning,

ProductionIntelligible pronunciation, an essential component of communicative competenceGoals of teaching intonation(see Chun 2002)

6Main cross-linguistic intonational differences:Differences in the tonal inventoryE.g. a fall instead of riseDifferences in the meaning or use of identical patternsPhonetic and phonotactic differences:In the realisation of such pitch accentsE.g. in the exact realisation (alignment and scaling) of a riseIn the internal structure of tonal elements and/or how they associate to the segmental material

Teaching intonation(See Ladd 1996: 119ff, Gussenhoven 2004: 60ff)7Phonetic differencesLa nia morena come mandarinas L+>H* L+>H*/ L+H* !H* L-L%(The girl with brown hair is eating mandarines)

Castilian: prenuclear rises reach postnuclear syllabes, as in nia and morena Galician: prenuclear rises end at the end of the stressed syllable, e.g. ni and re 8(1) Statement: Its raining.(2) Declarative question: It's raining?(3) Yes-no question: Is it raining?

Intonation only carries the distinction between:(1) statement (2) declarative question (yes-questions without syntactic marking)

In English, Spanish, Greek, etc

Interrogative intonation9 Declarative questions differ from statements in that they have: (i) a higher initial peak (ii) no medial rises (iii) a sharp rise at the end

The most salient perceptual cue for questions is (iii), the final rise Perceptual relevance of final rise possibly universal (cf. Gussenhoven 2004: 80ff) But L1 listeners can also use (i) and (ii); they dont have to wait until the end

Spanish interrogative intonationSpanish

StatementQuestionDeclarative questions differ from statements in the final end:Final fall in statementsFinal rise in questions

No early cues unlike in Spanish (e.g. Wells 2006)

(Grabe et al 2003)English intonation Goal: testing robustness of intonation cues of Spanish declarative questions and statements for L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish Spanish listeners can discriminate declarative questions and statements by listening just to the beginning (e.g. Navarro Toms 1944, Face 2005, 2007) Research questions: Can British learners discriminate between declarative questions and statements by the first intonational peak? If so, will they show differences in performance according to language level?

Perceptual experiment*:* Joint work with Mara Dolores Garca Verdugo. Preliminary results presented at EUROSLA 2009 and EUROCALL 2009. 13Experimental materialTest sentences read by female and male Madrid speakers (AMPER corpus):La guitarra se toca con pacienciaLa guitarra espaola se toca con pacienciaLa guitarra se toca con paciencia infinita

Identification experiment:La guitarra cut and used as stimuli3 practice trials + 12 test questions

Delivery:Online: experiment set up as a quiz in Moodle

Method

statementstatementstatementstatementquestionquestionMethod15Procedure: Perceptual test presented using Moodle Quiz

MethodQuestions

MethodParticipants: 48L1 Spanish: 15Madrid

L2 listeners at 4 levels: 33 Advanced: 13Intermediate: 8Beginners (5) + Some words (7): 12

MethodANOVA, sig. differencesF(4,46)=4.817**Eta Sq=0.561

Posthocs, confirm sig. differences: Native-Intermediate,Native-Beginners

**Results: Scores19ANOVA, no statistically significant differences

Results: Time taken20L2 participants performed according to their level of language competence, as expected

Effect of language competence: [Native ~ Advanced ] > [Intermediate ~ Beginners]

No difference between Native and Advanced levelIntermediate and Beginners

Learners can acquire L2 intonation even to the finest phonetic detail

Summary of findingsIs intonation worth teaching? And rhythm?Implications for the curriculum:Need to define objectives and outcomes of teaching prosodyImproving learners comprehension? Improving pragmatic competence?Improving intelligibility? Reducing foreign accent?Need to identify relevant L1-L2 contrastsRhythm, pitch range, pitch accents (density, types, realization)

Implications for the curriculum [stress-timed]

Vowel reduction: unstressed syllables are shorter and more centralized

Stressed vowels at roughly equal distanceGovernance [g.v.nnts] [gv.nnts]

EnglishSpanish [syllable-timed]

No vowel reduction:

Syllables of roughly equal duration

Rhythm(See also Dauer 1986, Ramus et al 1999, Grabe et al 1999)Governancia [go.e.nan.ja]23Cat: La mare de la Jana s de Badalona. Eng: The mother of Susana is from Badalona. Sp: La madre de Susana es de Badalona.

Distribution of languages (Catalan, English, Spanish) over the Delta C-%V, plane. RhythmDelta C%V

Prieto et al (submitted)MOSTLY CVCat: La mare de la Jana s de Badalona. Eng: The mother of Susana is from Badalona. Sp: La madre de Susana es de Badalona.

MOSTLY CLOSEDCat: Els donuts dAmsterdam sn realment internacionalsEng: These doughnuts from Amsterdam taste almost exceptionalSpan: Los donuts de msterdam sn realmente internacionales

MIXEDCat: Ell mai va tenir la possibilitat d'expressar-se. (15 sylls)Eng: A hurricane was announced this afternoon on the TV. (15 sylls) Span: Se enteraron de la noticia en este diario. (14 sylls)

24Intonational plasticity(Vallduv 1994, Vallduv & Engdahl 1996; Steedman 2000) Germanic langfixed word orderpitch accents move

Romance langfree word ordersyntactic constituents move

[+] PLASTIC [-] PLASTICDid John win the lottery?No, PETER won the lottery

Juan gan la lotera?No. La lotera, la gan PedroNo, fue Pedro

25VLEs such as Moodle can be used at different stages of curriculum design and implementation:

To identify learners needsThrough perception and production tests

To deliver teachingYes, it can be used to teach pronunciation (segmentals and intonation, oral comprehension, dialects,...)

To evaluate outcomes at different stagesDiscussion: VLE systems

Participants:12 Spanish(Las Palmas, UNED)

30 English (Cambridge U.)

Method: one activity per week, 5 weeks. March 2009

Example: Moodle Forum27

Example: Moodle Forum

Example: Moodle ForumThanks!Questions?Llusa AstrucThe Open University & The University of [email protected], D. M.(2002) Discourse intonation in L2. From theory and research to practice. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Dauer, R. M. (1983). Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 51-62.Face, T. L. (2005): F0 peak height and the perception of sentence type in Castilian Spanish, Revista Internacional de Lingstica Iberoamericana, 2 (6), 49-65.Face, T.L. (2007) The role of intonational cues in the perception of declaratives and absolute interrogatives in Castilian Spanish. EFE, XVI, 185-225.Gussenhoven, C. (2004) The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: CUP.Grabe, E., Watson, I. and Post, B. (1999). The acquisition of rhythmic patterns in English and French. In Proceedings ICPhS 1999, San Francisco, 1201-1204.Grabe, E., Kochanski, G. and Coleman, J. (2003). Quantitative modelling of intonational Variation. PDF. Proceedings of Speech Analysis and Recognition in Technology, Linguistics and Medicine.Navarro Toms, T. (1944): Manual de entonacin espaola, New York: Hispanic Institute in the United States.Prieto, P., Vanrell, M.M., Astruc, L., Payne, E., Post, B. (submitted) Prosodic temporal organization and speech rhythm. Evidence from Catalan, English, and Spanish. Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73, 265-292.Steedman, M. (2000) Information structure and the syntax-phonology interface. Linguistic Inquiry 31: 649-689.Vallduv, E. (1994) Detachment in Catalan and information packaging. Journal of Pragmatics 22, 573-601.Vallduv, E., Engdahl, E. (1996) The linguistic realization of information packaging. Linguistics 34: 459-519.Wells, J.C. (2006) English intonation. Cambridge: CUP.