Original Research
On English Language Learners’ Prosody: The Possible Impact of L2 Aptitude, Musical Ability, and Proficiency on Nuclear Accent Placement in Spanish L1 Contexts
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Although the literature has recently recognised the significance of suprasegmental features in L2 English perception and production, nuclear accent (NA) placement remains partly terra incognita (Landblom & Ionin, 2022; Nagle & Baese-Berk, 2022). Thus, this study examined the extent to which Spanish L1 learners of English can perceive and produce English NA placement. A total of 53 participants completed NA placement perception (listening and identification) and production tasks based on utterances in unmarked and marked contexts. Also, the role of L2 aptitude, musical ability, and L2 proficiency was analysed using three standardised tests: the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT), the Musical Ear Test (MET), and the Cambridge Placement Test. The results indicate that L2 aptitude was a weak predictor, whereas musical ability, specifically rhythm sensitivity, strongly predicted NA placement perception accuracy across the different sentence types. This effect was positively moderated by English proficiency. The study deepens our understanding of the perception-production link and supports the inclusion of prosodic training in L2 English acquisition.
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Keywords
Perception-Production; Nuclear Accent Placement; L2 Proficiency; L2 Aptitude; Musical Ability
Author(s) Information
Publisher’s Note
The claims, arguments, and counter-arguments made in this article are exclusively those of the contributing authors. Hence, they do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the authors’ affiliated institutions, or EUROKD as the publisher, the editors and the reviewers of the article.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to the students at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile, for their participation in this study.
Funding
This work was supported by the Chilean National Research and Development Agency, ANID, through Fondecyt grant No. 1220209.
CRediT Authorship Contribution Statement
Christopher Barra-García: Conceptualisation, Writing – Original Draft, Investigation, Data Curation
Mauricio Véliz-Campos: Conceptualisation, Supervision, Writing – Review And Editing, Funding Acquisition
Mauricio A. Figueroa Candia: Supervision, Project Administration
Yasna Ivonne Pereira-Reyes: Supervision, Validation
Mackarena Kartsevski Dune: Formal Analysis
Generative AI Use Disclosure Statement
Regarding the use of generative AI, we confirm that it was not used for content generation. Its use was limited solely to summarising human-authored text and refining the style of the manuscript.
Ethics Declarations
World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki–Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Participants
The authors explicitly adhered to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Participants were provided with written informed consent forms prior to their participation, and their participation was entirely voluntary.
Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data Availability
The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.