CiteULike is a free online bibliography manager. Register and you can start organising your references online.

The nature and patterning of native and non-native intonation in the expression of certainty and uncertainty: Pragmatic effects Export

Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 37, No. 12. (December 2005), pp. 2086-2115.

Citation Format

[Posts]

View FullText article


mariadolores's tags for this article

intonation l2 native non-native pragmatics prosody

X Reviews [Write a review of this article]

X Find related articles from these CiteULike users

X Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

X Posting History

X Abstract

The present article investigates whether the interlanguage intonation produced by non-native speakers of English might lead to pragmatic differences that could affect their spoken discourse in the expression of certainty and uncertainty. The study analyzes the prosodic forms produced by Spanish learners of English and compares it to the prosody of English native speakers in order to interpret the pragmatic meaning expressed in the conversation of both language user groups. To study Spanish learners’ and English native speakers’ intonation, a cross-linguistic computerized corpus has been compiled. The speech of both groups of speakers was digitally recorded while they performed two tasks: reading aloud and interpreting short English conversations. The data collected in the corpus, over 3 millions words, was analyzed acoustically in order to obtain comparable detailed and quantitative information on the prosodic characteristics produced by the two language user groups. The results reveal that the Spanish speakers’ choice of the English tone system may lead to pragmatic incompatibility in the expression of modality in their interactions.


X BibTeX record

X RIS record


Privacy Statement | Terms & Conditions
CiteULike organises scholarly (or academic) papers or literature and provides bibliographic (which means it makes bibliographies) for universities and higher education establishments. It helps undergraduates and postgraduates. People studying for PhDs or in postdoctoral (postdoc) positions. The service is similar in scope to EndNote or RefWorks or any other reference manager like BibTeX, but it is a social bookmarking service for scientists and humanities researchers.