The acquisition of question intonation by Vietnamese learners of English

Anh-Thư T Nguyễn,Đích Mục Đào

doi:10.1186/s40862-018-0044-4

Abstract

This paper examines the intonation of English statements and questions produced by Vietnamese speakers at two differing levels of proficiency. The goal of the study is three-fold: (1) analysing the final tunes and the prosodic structure observed in information-seeking questions, namely Yes-No question, Or-question, Tag-question and Wh-question, (2) evaluating which characteristics of the L2 English intonation can be clearly derived from the observation of the data, and (3) whether the L2 English intonation patterns are transferred from Vietnamese. A data set of 25 sentences that included 5 statements and 20 information-seeking questions were constructed. Ten native Australian English speakers as a control group and 20 Southern Vietnamese speakers of English (10 beginners and 10 advanced speakers) were recorded. The final tunes (the direction of the final F0 contours) of the sentences were analysed. The result showed that while the advanced speakers of English mostly produced intonation patterns that are typically used by native English speakers, beginning speakers of English used a variety of tunes, several of which are deviate from the native-like standard and clearly transferred from the tone contours in Vietnamese. The findings of this study have an original and significant contribution to the literature because it investigated into the prosodic transfer of intonation patterns between two typologically distinct languages: English, a stress accent language and Vietnamese, a contrastive contour tone language and has implications for intonation teaching.

Highlights

Research on interlanguage intonation has shown that the intonational patterns observed in learners’ productions are often influenced by their first languages (L1 s) (Mennen, 2004; Jilka, 2000; Rasier and Hiligsmann, 2007)
The goal of the study is three-fold: (1) analysing the final tunes and the prosodic structure observed in information-seeking questions, namely Yes-No question, Or-question, Tag-question and Wh-question, (2) evaluating which characteristics of the L2 English intonation can be clearly derived from the observation of the data, and (3) whether the L2 English intonation patterns are transferred from Vietnamese
The results showed that F0 patterns of beginning-level L2 English are systematically different from those of native English speakers, which can be transferred from their native tone language

Summary

Introduction

Research on interlanguage intonation has shown that the intonational patterns observed in learners’ productions are often influenced by their first languages (L1 s) (Mennen, 2004; Jilka, 2000; Rasier and Hiligsmann, 2007). As Mennen (2007) has pointed out, transfer may apply at the phonological as well as at the phonetic level. Transfers at the phonological level result from differences in the metrical structure or the tonal inventory. In a study on the intonation of tag questions in English, Ramírez and Romero (2005) have shown that Spanish speakers of English use rises at the end of the question tag for confirmation request, whereas native English speakers will use falls; these patterns were analysed as resulting from a phonological transfer. Transfers at the phonetic level occur when an identical phonological form differs in the way it is phonetically implemented in both languages

Objectives

Results

Conclusion