Definition of (di)simmilarities of a cross-linguistic prosodic contrast 140

As discussed in Chapter 1, it seems to be necessary to distinguish the dimensions along which perceived (di)simmilarities of a cross-linguistic prosodic contrasts are defined.

PAM-L2 (So, 2010; So and Best, 2011, 2014) predicts that the existence of the same phono-logical category in one’s L1 and L2 will help listeners to successfully map an L2 prosodic category onto an L1 category, regardless of at which linguistic level the prosodic cue builds a meaningful contrast in the L1 and L2. However, in Experiment 4, it was found that the pitch contrast that exists in the German intonational system did not help the nonnative listeners to map the Japanese pitch contrast fully, either due to the cross-linguistic phonetic differences of the same phonological category or due to the differ-ent linguistic levels at which the prosodic cue exhibits meaningful contrasts in one’s L1 and L2. This finding suggests that multiple dimensions should be taken into account to define cross-linguistic (dis)similarities in perception.

In the L2 Intonation Learning theory (Mennen, 2015), Mennen proposed four dimen-sions that characterise intonation along with similarities and differences between L1 and L2 (ibid., 173):

1. The inventory and distribution of categorical phonological elements (= systemic dimension)

6.1 General discussions 137 2. The phonetic implementation of these categorical elements (= realisational

dimen-sion)

3. The functionality of the categorical elements or tunes (= semantic dimension) 4. The frequency of use of the categorical elements (= frequency dimension)

Let’s take the Japanese and German pitch accents as examples for each of the dimen-sions proposed by Mennen (2015). The first dimension refers to typological similarities or differences in the inventory of structural phonological elements (such as pitch accents, accentual phrases, prosodic words and boundary phenomena) (Mennen, 2015, 174).

For example, the only Japanese pitch accent form is a falling one, while there are both falling and rising pitch accent forms in German. As for boundary tones, there are both falling and rising boundary tones in both languages. Thus, the phonological inventory of boundary tones is similar between the two languages than the one of pitch accents. The second dimension refers to cross-language similarity/dissimilarity in how the systemic prosodic elements are phonetically implemented or realised. As mentioned before, pho-netic realisations of a Japanese falling pitch accent differ from those of a German falling pitch accent. As for the third dimension, Mennen (2015) explained that it concerns the use of structural elements or tunes for conveying meaning. While a pitch accent realised with a drastic pitch fall is attitudinally neutral in Japanese, the one in German conveys attitudinal meanings such as frustration or anger (e.g. Gibbon, 1998).

Finally, the fourth dimension refers to cross-language similarities and differences in the frequency of use of the prosodic inventory. More frequently used varieties are ex-pected to be easier to acquire than those that are used less frequently (Gass and Mackey, 2002). To the four dimensions presented by Mennen (2015), I will propose to add the fifth dimension;

5. The linguistic level of categorical phonological elements (= linguistic level dimen-sion)

As discussed before, the same prosodic cue can convey meanings cross-linguistically at different linguistic levels. While Japanese pitch accents primarily convey lexical mean-ings, German pitch accents do not, but post-lexical or paralinguistic meanings. The lin-guistic levels at which a prosodic cue plays a role can influence the difficulty of acquisi-tion of that cue.

138 General discussion and outlook Finally, Experiment 2 revealed that the processing of L2 processing is vulnerable un-der increased task demands (due to the increased memory load and demand on atten-tion control). Such variabilities of L2 percepatten-tion under different task demands and cog-nitive load that are required in L2 perception have been rarely taken into account in the existing models up to date (with a notable exception in Best et al., 2001 that proposed to substantiate differences in the perception of auditory, phonetic and phonological in-formation in nonnative speech). The findings of this thesis show that perceived simi-larities for nonnative listeners cannot be simply defined by means of a cross-linguistic comparison of phonological categories, but they depend on task demands under which two sounds are presented.

6.2 Outlook

This dissertation has produced several results that invite further investigation. First, the learners generally performed better than the non-learners showing a positive learning effect of the L2. However, RT analyses in the perception experiments showed that the learners took longer for the responses than the non-learners. I postulated that the learn-ers and the non-learnlearn-ers applied different strategies to complete the tasks. Differences in the underlying mechanisms for the non-learners and the learners need further attention in future experiments. Second, in order to pinpoint the sources of the difficulties found in the semi-spontaneous production experiment, I traced speech perception and pro-duction back to their bases by conducting AX discrimination tasks and imitation tasks.

Little is still known however as to how L1 and L2 listeners and speakers may appropri-ately integrate the prosody of words at higher linguistic levels such as at the utterance level. Prosody at these higher linguistic levels is what is normally required in daily life speech processing. I will therefore examine the integration ofF₀and segmental length in L2 perception and production at the word level and at the short-sentence level. Third, after investigating prosody at the utterance level to understand better the processing of prosody required in daily life communication, I will aim at providing didactic implica-tions from the findings of my thesis and evaluate teaching methods on L2 prosody us-ing a pretest-posttest paradigm (e.g. Collentine, 1998; Dimitrov and Rumrill, 2003). The transfer from scientific experiments to actual classroom settings is one of the important contributions of a study on L2, since didactic methods in this area are far from being developed sufficiently.

6.3 An exploratory example: data-driven analyses ofF₀ 139