Prosodies in the Production of Polar and Informative Questions by Thai Native Speakers

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how Thai native speakers, whose native language utilises pitch to indicate lexical differences, produce English intonation and examine whether a prosodic transfer of L1 occurs in the L2 production in case of polar questions and informative questions. Despite its crucial role in communication and language learning, many English language learners have difficulty using appropriate intonation. The research was conducted by recording twenty Thai natives (undergraduate students) and three English natives speaking five polar and five informative questions in three speech rates (slow, natural, and fast). The record was analysed by PRAAT. The result showed that Thai natives could accurately produce the English intonation in the natural speech rate. Furthermore, the speech rates did not significantly affect the pitch change. However, interference from L1 also occurred in some participants. For example, some production was monotonous. Otherwise, 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.