A comparative analysis of intonation between Spanish and English speakers in tag questions, wh-questions, inverted questions, and repetition questions

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the differences and similarities in intonation when producing tag questions, wh-questions, inverted questions, and repetition questions among native English speakers and ESL Spanish speakers. These differences were measured and analyzed with a computer program called Praat, and the pitch, the intensity and the intonation contour were the focus of the study. The results have shown significant differences, as well as similarities between these two languages in some questions. The implication of this study is that the obtained data can help teachers and students to identify the problems that ESL Spanish speakers can have when learning English as a L2, especially with regards to intonation. KEYWORDS: Spanish intonation; English intonation; pronunciation; pitch; intensity.RESUMO: O objetivo deste estudo foi determinar as diferenças e semelhanças na entonação ao produzirem-se tag questions, Wh-questions, perguntas invertidas e perguntas de repetição entre falantes nativos do inglês e falantes do espanhol ESL. Essas diferenças foram medidas e analisadas com um programa de computador chamado Praat. Os resultados mostraram diferenças significativas, assim como semelhanças entre essas duas línguas. A implicação deste estudo é que os dados obtidos podem ajudar professores e alunos a identificar os problemas que os falantes de espanhol ESL podem ter ao aprender inglês como L2, especialmente em relação à entonação. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: entonação; espanhol; entonação inglês, pronúncia, pitch, intensidade. *

Nonverbal Auditory Cues Allow Relationship Quality to be Inferred During Conversations

“…It also suggests that prosodic cues may be culturally quite similar, at least across Indo-European languages, despite marked cultural differences in both speaking style (e.g., delivery speed, intonation) and expression. English makes use of wider variations in pitch than Spanish does (Farías, 2013 ), but these additional aspects of cultural “style” do not seem to make a significant additional contribution.…”

Errores comunes de entonación de la producción del idioma inglés como lengua extranjera (EFL) en estudiantes adultos de nivel intermedio-bajo

“…This tool was developed by the Phonetics Department at the University of Amsterdam below the direction of Boersma and Weenink (2008). (Farías, 2013). In this sense, the tool provides spectrograms of the speaker's voice in which the levels of pitch and intensity can be observed.…”

Non-Native Differences in Prosodic-Construction Use

“…We chose learners whose native language was Spanish, based on the ease of recruiting them. The segmental, lexical, and syntactic aspects of Spanish prosody are known to differ from English, as are the expressions of some pragmatic functions, including questions, back-channeling, complaining, and expressing probability and usuality (Bowen, 1956;Farias, 2013;Hualde, 2005;Berry, 1994;Ramirez Verdugo, 2005;Rivera and Ward, 2006;Rao, 2013a;Santiago and Delais-Roussarie, 2015;de la Mota et al, 2010). Spanish also expresses some pragmatic functions less with prosody than with word order, discourse particles, or gesture (Borras-Comes et al, 2014;Ortega-Llebaria and Colantoni, 2014).…”