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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 10:4 (2020) ► pp.499–529

The perception and interpretation of sentence types by L1 Spanish–L2 English speakers

ORCID logo | University of Toronto
| University of Toronto
| University of Toronto
| University of Toronto
| University of Toronto
| University of Toronto

While the L2 perception of segmentals has been investigated, our knowledge of the L2 perception of intonation is limited. Moreover, it is unclear how context affects L1 transfer. This study investigates the perception of English sentence types by adult L1 Spanish speakers across tasks varying in contextual information. In Task 1, participants heard low-pass filtered utterances and identified them as statements, questions or exclamations. Task 2 was similar, but consisted of unaltered utterances. In Task 3, participants heard a scenario and three options (absolute question, declarative question, statement), and selected the best one. Accuracy and reaction times were measured. Learners had the most difficulty in Task 3, but were target-like in the others, confirming previous findings. Namely, L2 speakers perform better in tasks lacking contextual information versus contextualized ones. Thus, while learners maintain their auditory resolution to intonation cues in non-speech tasks, they cannot relate contours to appropriate L2 meanings.

Keywords: sentence type, L2 perception of intonation, English and Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The L2 perception of sentence intonation
    • 2.2AQs, DQs and Ss in English and Spanish
    • 2.3The acquisition of sentence types
    • 2.4The perception of AQs, DQs, and Ss
  • 3.Research questions & predictions
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Tasks and stimuli
      • 4.2.1Stimuli preparation for the IO and SI tasks
      • 4.2.2Stimuli preparation for the C task
      • 4.2.3Acoustic characteristics of the experimental stimuli
    • 4.3Procedure
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Accuracy data
    • 5.2Reaction times
    • 5.3Analysis of the response types
    • 5.4Learner variables
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.17004.rad
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