Vowel lengthening in L2 Italian and L2 French: a cue for focus marking?
Abstract
Our study investigates the role of vowel duration as a
cue for focus marking in both L1 and L2 Italian and French.
We aim to compare our data to highlight potential influences
of the native language on L2 productions in the use of this
cue. The analysis involves task-elicited speech from 60 partici-
pants: 15 native Italian speakers, 15 native French speakers, 15
French learners of Italian (L2), and 15 Italian learners of French
(L2). Participants produced the same target constituent under
four information-structural conditions: background, broad fo-
cus, identification focus, and correction focus. Results reveal
that the information-structural function significantly influences
stressed vowel duration in native Italian, with identification-
focus and correction-focus constituents bearing longer duration
than background and broad focus. However, the same pattern
does not hold in native French. Crucially, this distinction is mir-
rored in the production of non-native speakers. Italian learners
of L2 French, in fact, modulate duration based on the infor-
mational role of the constituent; in contrast, French learners of
Italian L2 do not. We discuss these findings in relation to pre-
vious findings on other prosodic and syntactic markers of fo-
cus. Results are commented in light of typological differences
in discourse-prominence marking and theories of L2 prosody
acquisition.
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)