The nature and patterning of native and non-native intonation in the expression of certainty and uncertainty: Pragmatic effects

The present article investigates whether the interlanguage intonation produced by non-native speakers of English might lead to pragmatic differences that could affect their spoken discourse in the expression of certainty and uncertainty. The study analyzes the prosodic forms produced by Spanish learners of English and compares it to the prosody of English native speakers in order to interpret the pragmatic meaning expressed in the conversation of both language user groups. To study Spanish learners’ and English native speakers’ intonation, a cross-linguistic computerized corpus has been compiled. The speech of both groups of speakers was digitally recorded while they performed two tasks: reading aloud and interpreting short English conversations. The data collected in the corpus, over 3 millions words, was analyzed acoustically in order to obtain comparable detailed and quantitative information on the prosodic characteristics produced by the two language user groups. The results reveal that the Spanish speakers’ choice of the English tone system may lead to pragmatic incompatibility in the expression of modality in their interactions.