Cross-linguistic perception of Spanish intonation by Chinese speakers: Effects of linguistic experience and prosodic features.

Abstract

Prior research suggests that Chinese speakers, due to their extensive experience with a tonal language, have an enhanced ability to discern pitch contrasts. This study investigates whether this aptitude extends to perceiving intonation in second language (L2) Spanish, and how it interacts with intonation and stress patterns. 43 native Spanish speakers and 75 Chinese learners of Spanish participated in a forced-choice perceptual test. Participants were asked to identify the sentence type of stimuli, which were created using the gating method. The results revealed that native speakers consistently outperformed Chinese learners in mapping diverse pitch contours into intonation categories, notably those absent in the L2 prosodic system. However, Chinese learners exhibited significant improvements in intonation perception after hearing the initial F0 peak and the F0 downslope of the nuclear syllable, suggesting a positive transfer of pitch discrimination skills developed in their native speech. Additionally, the position of the final stressed syllable was found to influence intonation identification, with its effect varying depending on utterance length. These findings highlight the complex interplay of cross-linguistic intonation perception and emphasize the importance of linguistic background and prosodic context in assessing the perceptual performance of L2 listeners.