Discourse Intonation in L2


Book Description

Intonation, rhythm, and general "melody" of language are among the first aspects of speech that infants attend to and produce themselves. Yet, these same features are among the last to be mastered by adult L2 learners. Why is this, and how can L2 learners be helped? This book first presents the latest linguistic theories of intonation, in particular, how intonation functions in discourse not only to signal sentence types and attitudinal meanings but also to provide turn-taking and other conversational cues. The second part of the book examines the research in applied linguistics on the acquisition of L2 phonology and intonation. The third section offers practical applications of how to incorporate the teaching of intonation into L2 instruction, with a focus on using new speech technologies. The accompanying CD-ROM makes a unique addition in allowing for simultaneous audio playback and visual display of the pitch contours of utterances contained in the book. Users can start or stop the playback at any point in the utterance and can observe first-hand how such visual and audio representations could be useful for L2 learners.




Discourse Intonation in L2


Book Description

Intonation, rhythm, and general “melody” of language are among the first aspects of speech that infants attend to and produce themselves. Yet, these same features are among the last to be mastered by adult L2 learners. Why is this, and how can L2 learners be helped? This book first presents the latest linguistic theories of intonation, in particular, how intonation functions in discourse not only to signal sentence types and attitudinal meanings but also to provide turn-taking and other conversational cues. The second part of the book examines the research in applied linguistics on the acquisition of L2 phonology and intonation. The third section offers practical applications of how to incorporate the teaching of intonation into L2 instruction, with a focus on using new speech technologies. The accompanying CD-ROM makes a unique addition in allowing for simultaneous audio playback and visual display of the pitch contours of utterances contained in the book. Users can start or stop the playback at any point in the utterance and can observe first-hand how such visual and audio representations could be useful for L2 learners.




Intonation in L2 Discourse


Book Description

Grounded in a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) approach, this book applies a contrastive interlanguage corpus-based approach to investigate the nature and role of L2 intonation and its pragmatic function in spoken discourse. The volume offers a brief overview of SFL theories and frameworks, with a clear focus on Halliday’s model of phonology and the proposal of developing a grammar of speech. Integrating a SFL framework with a corpus linguistic-informed approach, the book uses this foundation as a jumping-off point from which to explore the prosodic complexities involved in English language teaching and learning for L2 learners, highlighting its various functions as illustrated in examples from the UAM English Learner Spoken Corpus. A final chapter synthesizes these findings toward critically reflecting on future directions for the study of L2 speech prosody. This book will be key reading for graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics and English language teaching.




Discourse Intonation


Book Description

This textbook is an accessible introduction to discourse intonation for ESL/EFL instructors, whether practicing or in pre-service graduate programs. Because intonation is used to form impressions about a speaker’s attitude, it is crucial that instructors understand the details of the underlying linguistic system so that they can help students avoid the more common intonation-related pitfalls they experience when communicating in an academic setting. This textbook relies heavily on the Brazil model; chapters are organized around different parts of that model and how they can be most effectively taught. Readers will learn the conventions underlying, for example, how we group words in prosodic units, how we understand turn-taking cues in conversation, and how we assess whether someone is feeling angry or sad. This text features Check Your Learning sections, discussion questions, and hands-on activities at the end of every chapter. Chapters 3-9 also include a section on pedagogical implications. Some of the example sentences that illustrate intonation have accompanying short audio (MP3) files, which can be found online at www.press.umich.edu/elt/compsite/DI.




Intelligibility, Oral Communication, and the Teaching of Pronunciation


Book Description

An intelligibility-based approach to teaching that presents pronunciation as critical, yet neglected, in communicative language teaching.




Prosody and Language in Contact


Book Description

This volume provides new insights into various issues on prosody in contact situations, contact referring here to the L2 acquisition process as well as to situations where two language systems may co-exist. A wide array of phenomena are dealt with (prosodic description of linguistic systems in contact situations, analysis of prosodic changes, language development processes, etc.), and the results obtained may give an indication of what is more or less stable in phonological and prosodic systems. In addition, the selected papers clearly show how languages may have influenced or may have been influenced by other language varieties (in multilingual situations where different languages are in constant contact with one another, but also in the process of L2 acquisition). Unlike previous volumes on related topics, which focus in general either on L2 acquisition or on the description and analyses of different varieties of a given language, this volume considers both topics in parallel, allowing comparison and discussion of the results, which may shed new light on more far-reaching theoretical questions such as the role of markedness in prosody and the causes of prosodic changes.




A Corpus-driven Study of Discourse Intonation


Book Description

The book is the first to apply David Brazil s Discourse Intonation systems (prominence, tone, key and termination) to the study of a corpus of authentic, naturally-occurring spoken discourses. The Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (prosodic) is made up of approximately one million words consisting of four sub-corpora of equal size, namely academic, conversation, business and public. The participants are all adults and typically have either Cantonese or English as their first language. The four Discourse Intonation systems are described in terms of how the system works and how they are manifested in the corpus, both across the sub-corpora and also across speakers in the corpus. The book is accompanied with a CD containing the prosodically transcribed corpus together with iConc which is the software designed and written specifically to interrogate the HKCSE (prosodic). The issues raised and discussed are all of importance in Conversation Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, Discourse Intonation, Pragmatics, and Intercultural Communication.




L2 Spoken Discourse


Book Description

This book integrates theoretical and practical perspectives on computer-assisted analysis of spoken discourse, reflecting recent important developments in speech analysis for language teaching and assessment. Bringing together into one volume the methods and approaches for analysis of speech properties and spoken discourse, Ghanem, Kang, and Kostromitina illustrate the importance of adaptive learning technologies in analyzing speech. The book offers a comprehensive go-to resource for the description of various features in second language (L2) spoken discourse as well as a guide for ways in which they can be extracted and analyzed. The text aims to accomplish its goal by providing an overview of linguistic features found in L2 acquisition, clarifying evidence-based constructs in L2 speech, and applying various analyses to suggestions for practice. This book brings together various strands of research and application with an emphasis on analysis of speech properties, which can be a gate-keeping function of speech. In particular, its innovative approach lies with the introduction of segmental, suprasegmental, lexico-grammatical, and pragmatic features in the analysis of L2 speech. This approach offers a more comprehensive view of L2 spoken discourse which can be extremely beneficial for L2 research and pedagogy. Covering the speech of both native and non-native speakers, but with particular relevance for second language acquisition, this book is essential reading for graduate students, teachers, and researchers in applied linguistics, TESOL, and other speech-science related fields.




Non-native Speech


Book Description

Based on an innovative corpus-based approach, this book offers a comprehensive survey of the phonological and phonetic properties of L2 speech in English and German. The first part of the book critically examines current theoretical models and research methodologies in the field of second language acquisition of phonology and describes the advances that have been made in corpus linguistics over the past few years - in particular, the development of phonological learner corpora. It furthermore presents the first learner corpus of L2 English and L2 German that is fully aligned and has extensive phonological annotations: the LeaP corpus. The second part of the book describes the results of the quantitative and qualitative corpus analyses in the following areas of non-native speech: fluency, final consonant cluster realisation, vowel reduction and speech rhythm, intonation and general foreign accent. In addition, the influence of many non-linguistic factors, including instruction and a stay abroad, on the phonological properties of non-native speech is explored.




Second Language Speech Learning


Book Description

Including contributions from a team of world-renowned international scholars, this volume is a state-of-the-art survey of second language speech research, showcasing new empirical studies alongside critical reviews of existing influential speech learning models. It presents a revised version of Flege's Speech Learning Model (SLM-r) for the first time, an update on a cornerstone of second language research. Chapters are grouped into five thematic areas: theoretical progress, segmental acquisition, acquiring suprasegmental features, accentedness and acoustic features, and cognitive and psychological variables. Every chapter provides new empirical evidence, offering new insights as well as challenges on aspects of the second language speech acquisition process. Comprehensive in its coverage, this book summarises the state of current research in second language phonology, and aims to shape and inspire future research in the field. It is an essential resource for academic researchers and students of second language acquisition, applied linguistics and phonetics and phonology.