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

Abstract

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.

Perception and Production of Sentence Types by Inuktitut-English Bilinguals

“…These studies, however, did not explore whether access to contextual information was responsible for the differences observed. Studies that have examined the role of access to contextual information have yielded consistent results both in perception (Grabe et al 2003;Radu et al 2018;Patience et al 2020) and perception-production (Ortega-Llebaria and Colantoni 2014). Grabe et al's (2003) pioneering study showed that three groups of English, Mandarin and Peninsular Spanish speakers did not differ in their discrimination of falling and rising contours in non-speech stimuli (i.e., frequency modulated sine-waves), but differed in their perception of falling contours when they listened to the utterance Melanie Maloney (whose final syllable was manipulated to generate 11 different stimuli with rising and falling contours) produced by a Scottish English speaker.…”

“…Closer to our study are investigations that have analyzed the role of CLI in the perception of sentence types in early and late bilinguals. These studies have used a variety of methodologies, such as gating paradigms (Marasco 2020), identification tasks (Radu et al 2018;Patience et al 2020) or imitation of resynthesized stimuli (Zárate-Sández 2015) and have yielded mixed results. L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers were the focus of two studies (Zárate-Sández 2015; Marasco 2020).…”

“…However, heritage speakers and advanced learners shifted between the two categories at an earlier point than native speakers. Radu et al (2018) explored the identification and comprehension of statements, yes-no questions and declarative questions in L1 Spanish-L2 English advanced learners and found no evidence of CLI in the perception of either low-pass filtered or isolated stimuli. CLI was restricted to the interpretation of the different question types (see Section 2.2).…”

“…Spanish participants were outperformed by Mandarin learners, which is expected given that Mandarin resembles English more closely than Spanish in the prosodic marking of corrective stress. Radu et al (2018) analyzed the perception and interpretation of Ss, AQs and DQs by L1 Spanish-L2 English speakers, using a variety of tasks. They found that learners did not differ from controls in tasks that tapped auditory processing, but they diverged from controls in contextualized tasks in which they had to choose the sentence type that appropriately completed a given context.…”

“…They found that learners did not differ from controls in tasks that tapped auditory processing, but they diverged from controls in contextualized tasks in which they had to choose the sentence type that appropriately completed a given context. Patience et al (2020), which was based on the same methodology as Radu et al (2018), found that Mandarin speakers behaved similar to controls, outperforming L1 Spanish speakers. As mentioned, the relative success of the L1 Mandarin speakers was attributed to positive CLI, given that Mandarin also contrasts prosodically between AQs and DQs.…”