Prosodic Marking of Object Focus in L2 Spanish

Abstract L + H* is used for corrective focus both in American English and Peninsular Spanish, but its phonetic implementation may still differ. Furthermore, features such as longer duration or relative F0 differences correlate as well with the realization of corrective focus in both languages. For L2 speakers, the acquisition of these form-meaning associations may be constrained by patterns of transfer from the L1, universal tendencies such as the use of default intonational patterns, or development of the L2 grammar. We analyzed four acoustic features (i.e., peak alignment, pitch scaling, relative F0, and duration) as manifested in informational and corrective object focus statements elicited from 10 native Spanish speakers and 10 English-speaking learners of Spanish through a question-and-answer pairs task. Our findings reveal that while learners of Spanish can adjust the phonetic implementation of focal accents towards the target (e.g., producing earlier peaks and longer stressed vowels), L1 English features (e.g., wider pitch scaling and smaller relative F0 differences) are also manifested in their production. We discuss these findings in connection with Mennen, Ineke. 2015. Beyond segments: Towards a L2 intonation learning theory. In Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie, Mathieu Avanzi & Sophie Herment (eds.), Prosody and languages in contact, 171–188. Berlin: Springer. L2 Intonation Learning theory as well as previous studies in an effort to improve understanding of the constraining factors in the development of L2 intonational grammars.