The temporal features at prosodic boundaries in Chinese L2 English speech: Patterns and interactions

Abstract

Our main focus is on the temporal features at different prosodic boundaries in Chinese L2 spoken discourse. We compared Chinese L2 and English L1 speakers in respect of the prosodic boundary distributions under different prosodic domains; pause patterns and lengthening patterns at different layers of prosodic boundaries; as well as their interactions. Pause, the “break” force which maintains the independence of each prosodic unit, and lengthening, the “join” force which aims to form a continuous spoken discourse, remain a big challenge to Chinese L2 English learners. Finally the correlation between these temporal features and language proficiency was examined. The result shows that the pause patterns are highly correlated with Chinese L2 English proficiency, while the lengthening patterns are slightly correlated with language proficiency but lack a systematic relation between males and females.