Marianne Radel

Acquisition of Second Language Intonation Marianne Radel

Frequently, advanced speakers of a second language use the foreign grammar perfectly - often knowing the rules better than native speakers. And yet, by listening to their talking, native speakers know immediately that they are communicating with foreigners. The problem lies in the area of prosody. In classroom situations students might learn how to role an 'r' or form a proper 'th', but not how to produce entire intonation phrases. However, only with intonation is the full meaning, that a speaker wants to communicate, understood. But why is intonation assumed to be of special difficulty to L2 learners? Why are certain features more difficult to learn than others? This investigation sheds some light on the direction of acquisition of intonation by L2 learners (here: L2 Spanish by L1 speakers of German) and simultaneously makes predictions about the markedness of certain phenomena in the languages under consideration. These findings may help language teachers and learners as well-directed teaching materials can be derived and major problems in the acquisition process can be resolved more easily.