L’apprendimento della prosodia dell’italiano in contesto LS: Uno studio su apprendenti giapponesi

Debora Vigiliano; Elisa Pellegrino; Massimo Pettorino

doi:10.17469/O2102AISV000006

Authors

Debora Vigiliano Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University, Kawauchi, Sendai, Japan
Elisa Pellegrino Dept. of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Massimo Pettorino Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Linguistici e Comparati, Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale, Napoli

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17469/O2102AISV000006

Keywords:

L2 prosody training, self-imitation, prosodic transplantation technique

Abstract

This study aims to test the effectiveness of self-imitation technique to develop a native-like prosodic competence. Seven Japanese learners of Italian (NNSs) and 2 Italian native speakers (NSs) were asked to read aloud and record two sentences in Italian conveying different pragmatic functions. The utterances of NNSs received the suprasegmental features of NSs’ productions through the transplantation technique. NNSs imitated their own voice previously modified to match the reference NSs and recorded the new performance. 17 native Italian listeners rated pre- and post-training productions for pragmatic function and accentedness. The same productions were compared to the NSs’ performance by utterance duration and length of vocalic and consonantal intervals. The results showed that self-imitation improves NNSs communicative effectiveness. After the training, utterance duration and vocalic intervals length better match the target duration.