Learning to Speak with a New Melody

What is it about?

When we learn a new language, we learn words, grammar and pronunciation. But we also have to learn something much less "visible": its melody or intonation. Intonation helps us distinguish, for example, a statement from a question, emphasize one part of a sentence, and communicate meanings such as surprise, politeness, irony or obviousness. The wrong melody can therefore change how our intended meaning is understood. But how do we learn the melody of another language? And what happens when the intonation patterns we already know are similar to – or very different from – those of the new language? To explore these questions, I compared intonation contours produced by Czech learners of Spanish, Czech learners of Italian, and German learners of Spanish. This multidirectional comparison allowed me to examine both sides of the process: the influence of the first language and the characteristics of the language being learned. Sixty learners responded to everyday situations designed to elicit very different kinds of sentences – from neutral and non-neutral statements to yes/no and wh-questions, exclamations and calls. The resulting large production database made it possible to compare how speakers use melody across languages and communicative situations. The results show that learning intonation is not simply a matter of replacing one melody with another. Learners may transfer patterns from their first language – sometimes successfully, sometimes not – but they also develop native-like and completely new, mixed patterns. What they learn depends strongly on the type of sentence and the position of the melodic pattern within the utterance. Based on these findings, I propose a Developmental L2 Intonation Hypothesis, which captures some general tendencies in how the melody of a new language develops. Most importantly, the study shows that intonation is learnable: our first language provides the starting point, but it does not determine where we end up.

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Why is it important?

Intonation is an essential part of communication, yet it is often overlooked when we learn or teach a new language. Understanding its role can help us learn to communicate more effectively in another language.

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