This paper reports the results of a production experiment which investigated the acquisition of some aspects of second language (L2) intonation in adulthood. The aspects of intonation under investigation were (i) the timing of the peak (alignment), and (ii) the pitch range. It was found that most of the Dutch speakers of Modern Greek, even though they were very advanced, had failed to acquire native-like production for these aspects of intonation. Non-native alignment was consistently earlier than, and pitch range was narrower than in native speakers' Greek. It is suggested here that in the teaching of intonation attention should not only be given to the intonation patterns (the different melodies) of a foreign language, but also to phonetic detail.
Cite as: Mennen, I. (1998) Can language learners ever acquire the intonation of a second language? Proc. ETRW on Speech Technology in Language Learning (STiLL), 17-20
@inproceedings{mennen98_still,
author={Ineke Mennen},
title={{Can language learners ever acquire the intonation of a second language?}},
year=1998,
booktitle={Proc. ETRW on Speech Technology in Language Learning (STiLL)},
pages={17--20}
}