{"title":"Cross-Linguistic Influences on L2 Prosody Perception: Evidence from English Interrogative Focus Perception by Mandarin Listeners.","authors":"Xing Liu, Xiaoxiang Chen, Chen Kuang, Fei Chen","doi":"10.3390/brainsci15091000","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background/objectives: </strong>This study sets out to explore how L1 Mandarin speakers with varying lengths of L2 experience perceived English focus interrogative tune, L*H-H%, within the framework of the autosegmental-metrical model.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Eighteen Mandarin speakers with varying lengths of residence in the United States and eighteen English native speakers were invited to perceive prosodic prominence and judge the naturalness of focus prosody tunes.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>For the perception of on-focus pitch accent L*, Mandarin speakers performed well in the prominence detection task but not in the focus identification task. For post-focus edge tones, we found that phrase accents were more susceptible to L1 influences than boundary tones due to the varying degrees of cross-linguistic similarity between these intonational categories. The results also show that even listeners with extended L2 experience were not proficient in their perception of L2 interrogative focus tunes.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This study reveals the advantage of considering the degree of L1-L2 similarity and the necessity to examine cross-linguistic influences on L2 perception of prosody separately in phonological and phonetic dimensions.</p>","PeriodicalId":9095,"journal":{"name":"Brain Sciences","volume":"15 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12468771/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Brain Sciences","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci15091000","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"NEUROSCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background/objectives: This study sets out to explore how L1 Mandarin speakers with varying lengths of L2 experience perceived English focus interrogative tune, L*H-H%, within the framework of the autosegmental-metrical model.
Methods: Eighteen Mandarin speakers with varying lengths of residence in the United States and eighteen English native speakers were invited to perceive prosodic prominence and judge the naturalness of focus prosody tunes.
Results: For the perception of on-focus pitch accent L*, Mandarin speakers performed well in the prominence detection task but not in the focus identification task. For post-focus edge tones, we found that phrase accents were more susceptible to L1 influences than boundary tones due to the varying degrees of cross-linguistic similarity between these intonational categories. The results also show that even listeners with extended L2 experience were not proficient in their perception of L2 interrogative focus tunes.
Conclusions: This study reveals the advantage of considering the degree of L1-L2 similarity and the necessity to examine cross-linguistic influences on L2 perception of prosody separately in phonological and phonetic dimensions.
期刊介绍:
Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles, critical reviews, research notes and short communications in the areas of cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, molecular and cellular neuroscience, neural engineering, neuroimaging, neurolinguistics, neuropathy, systems neuroscience, and theoretical and computational neuroscience. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers. The full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. Electronic files or software regarding the full details of the calculation and experimental procedure, if unable to be published in a normal way, can be deposited as supplementary material.