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

Intonation belongs to the suprasegmental level of language (also called prosody) Units of prosody (‘prosodic structure’) –segments > syllables > feet > words > phrases Prosodic sub-systems: –Intonation –Stress ‘ánima’, ‘anima’, ‘animó’ [ ˈ anima, a ˈ nima, ani ˈ mo] –Rhythm Introduction: prosody & intonation

Phonetics and phonology Syntax, semantics, pragmatics “Your opponents talk, honestly” “Your opponents talk honestly” Language acquisition Literacy acquisition –Prosodic deficit hypothesis –Reading comprehension … Introduction: prosody & intonation

Fundamental frequency and pitch Pitch accents are... Boundary tones are… Intonation Two tonal boundaries, both low (L), after ‘ready’ and ‘announced’. No pitch accents in ‘my mother announced’.

Grammatical function –Question vs. statement, yes-no vs. wh-question,… Pragmatic (‘attitudinal’) function –Speaker’s attitude, point of view,… Discourse function –Information marking (old vs. new information), turn- taking,... Paralinguistic and sociolinguistic functions –Emotions, group identity,… (see Chun 2002 for an overview ) Functions of intonation

Improving: Comprehension –Segmentation and lexical retrieval –Grammatical function, pragmatic meaning,… Production –Intelligible pronunciation, an essential component of communicative competence Goals of teaching intonation (see Chun 2002)

Main cross-linguistic intonational differences: Differences in the tonal inventory –E.g. a fall instead of rise Differences in the meaning or use of identical patterns Phonetic and phonotactic differences: In the realisation of such pitch accents –E.g. in the exact realisation (‘alignment’ and ‘scaling’) of a rise –In the internal structure of tonal elements and/or how they associate to the segmental material Teaching intonation (See Ladd 1996: 119ff, Gussenhoven 2004: 60ff)

Phonetic differences La niña 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 ‘niña’ and ‘morena’ Galician: prenuclear rises end at the end of the stressed syllable, e.g. ni’ and ‘re’

(1) Statement: ‘It’s 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 intonation

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 don’t have to wait until the end Spanish interrogative intonation

Spanish StatementQuestion

Declarative questions differ from statements in the final end: –Final fall in statements –Final 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 Tomás 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 María Dolores García Verdugo. Preliminary results presented at EUROSLA 2009 and EUROCALL 2009.

Experimental material –Test sentences read by female and male Madrid speakers (AMPER corpus): La guitarra se toca con paciencia La guitarra española se toca con paciencia La guitarra se toca con paciencia infinita Identification experiment: –“La guitarra” cut and used as stimuli –3 practice trials + 12 test questions Delivery: –Online: experiment set up as a quiz in Moodle Method

statement question Method

Procedure: Perceptual test presented using Moodle Quiz Method

Questions Method

Participants: 48 –L1 Spanish: 15 Madrid –L2 listeners at 4 levels: 33 Advanced: 13 Intermediate: 8 Beginners (5) + “Some words” (7): 12 Method

ANOVA, sig. differences F(4,46)=4.817** Eta Sq=0.561 Posthocs, confirm sig. differences: Native-Intermediate, Native-Beginners ** Results: Scores

ANOVA, no statistically significant differences Results: Time taken

L2 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 level –Intermediate and Beginners Learners can acquire L2 intonation even to the finest phonetic detail Summary of findings

Is intonation worth teaching? And rhythm? Implications for the curriculum: –Need to define objectives and outcomes of teaching prosody Improving learners’ comprehension? Improving pragmatic competence? Improving intelligibility? Reducing foreign accent? –Need to identify relevant L1-L2 contrasts Rhythm, 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 distance Governance [ ˡgʌ.v ɘ. nɘn t s] [ ˡgʌv. nɘn t s] English Spanish [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. ß e ɾ.ˡ nan. θja ]

Cat: La mare de la Jana és 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. Rhythm Delta C %V Prieto et al (submitted)

Intonational plasticity (Vallduví 1994, Vallduví & Engdahl 1996; Steedman 2000) Germanic lang fixed word order pitch accents move Romance lang free word order syntactic constituents move [+] PLASTIC [-] PLASTIC ‘ Did John win the lottery?’ ‘No, PETER won the lottery’ ‘¿Juan ganó la lotería?’ ‘No. La lotería, la ganó Pedro’ ‘No, fue Pedro’

VLEs such as Moodle can be used at different stages of curriculum design and implementation: –To identify learner’s needs Through perception and production tests –To deliver teaching Yes, it can be used to teach pronunciation (segmentals and intonation, oral comprehension, dialects,...) –To evaluate outcomes at different stages Discussion: VLE systems

Participants: 12 Spanish (Las Palmas, UNED) 30 English (Cambridge U.) Method: one activity per week, 5 weeks. March 2009 Example: Moodle Forum

Thanks! Questions? Lluïsa Astruc The Open University & The University of Cambridge

References Chun, 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, Face, T. L. (2005): «F0 peak height and the perception of sentence type in Castilian Spanish», Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 2 (6), Face, T.L. (2007) The role of intonational cues in the perception of declaratives and absolute interrogatives in Castilian Spanish. EFE, XVI, 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, 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 Tomás, T. (1944): Manual de entonación española, 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, Steedman, M. (2000) Information structure and the syntax-phonology interface. Linguistic Inquiry 31: Vallduví, E. (1994) Detachment in Catalan and information packaging. Journal of Pragmatics 22, Vallduví, E., Engdahl, E. (1996) The linguistic realization of information packaging. Linguistics 34: Wells, J.C. (2006) English intonation. Cambridge: CUP.