Abstract
The present study offers a quantitative and acoustic analysis of a corpus of spontaneous speech produced by Serbian EFL students, in terms of intonation unit organization (tonality), nucleus placement (tonicity), and the realization of nuclear pitch contours (tone). The results show that, regarding tonality, the participants’ spontaneous speech was characterized by numerous interruptions and hesitations, with comparatively few complete IUs. Regarding tonicity, the nucleus was almost invariably placed in the default position (the last stressed syllable). And in terms of tone, quite different nuclear pitch contours were produced in sentence-internal (continuing) and sentence-final intonation units, although in both structural positions the participants used both falling and rising contours. The phonetic parameters of pitch height, span, slope, alignment, duration, and intensity all proved to be relevant for these distinctions.
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