This study investigates how English and Mandarin speakers (1) use pitch resets and pauses to signal discourse
boundaries, and (2) use pitch, duration, and intensity to indicate contrastive stress in their L1s. This study also explores how
Mandarin-speaking English learners use prosodic features in L1 Mandarin and L2 English. Linear mixed-effects models showed that
Mandarin and English share similarities in the forms and functions of prosody. However, Mandarin-speaking English learners did not
transfer prosody usage to L2 English despite these similarities. These findings suggest that L2 prosody learning is not a
typological transfer between two static language systems. Rather, it involves the interaction between two complex and dynamic prosody
systems, each with its own mapping between prosodic forms and functions. Prosody teaching, therefore, should take into account the
dynamic nature of prosody and compare L1 and L2 prosody in forms, meanings, and functions.
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2021. On the Difficulty of Defining “Difficult” in Second-Language Vowel Acquisition. Frontiers in Communication 6
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