Prosodies in the production of polar and informative questions by Thai native speakers

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how Thai native speakers, whose native language utilizes pitch to indicate lexical differences, produced English intonation and to examine whether a prosodic transfer of L1 occurs in the L2 production in the case of polar and informative questions. Moreover, this study also examined whether a prosodic transfer occurs regarding tone alignment and speech rates. The research was conducted by recording 20 Thai natives (undergraduate students) and 3 English natives speaking 5 polar and 5 informative questions at 3 different speech rates (slow, natural, and fast). The record was analyzed by PRAAT. The result showed that overall Thai natives produced distinct intonation in polar questions (in both high and low tone alignments) and informative questions (in low tone alignment) in the natural speech rate. However, the individual analysis of each question showed that Thai native speakers' intonation only differed from that of English natives in specific question patterns. Furthermore, the speech rates did not significantly affect the pitch change. However, some production was monotonous. When native Thai speakers speak or pronounce English questions or sentences without tone indicators, they tend to sound monotone, as was the case in this study. In addition, some produced low intonation at the end of polar questions. In contrast, some produced high intonation at the end of informative questions. These phenomena of the inconsistency of intonation explicitly occurred when speech rates changed. The findings show L1 transfer in Thai native speakers' English intonation production. As a result, it can be inferred that the collected data can assist teachers and students in identifying the problems Thai EFL speakers may face when learning English as a foreign language, specifically in terms of English intonation.