This study investigates Korean English learners' use of prosodic cues in comma-induced boundaries across two proficiency levels as an indication of prosodic boundary of intonation phrases. Three advanced and three low-intermediate learners completed sentence reading, forced-choice, and controlled shadowing tasks measuring prosodic strategies in production and perception, where the stimuli consisted of preposed adverbial clauses. Advanced learners systematically varied pause durations and perceptually integrated manipulated F0, pause, and preboundary lengthening. Low-intermediate learners showed no sensitivity to external prosodic manipulations. Notably, participants produced significantly stronger prosodic cues in the shadowing task compared to sentence reading, indicating conscious awareness and strategic adjustment of boundary marking strategies. Results suggest advanced learners strategically employ prosodic cues at comma-induced boundaries more similarly to native speakers, while lower-proficiency learners underutilize or overexaggerated these features. This difference reflects developmental trajectories in L2 prosodic competence, with advanced learners demonstrating native-like cue weighting unlike learners of lower-proficiency for some prosodic cues. Findings can tentatively suggest proficiency-mediated differences in prosodic processing, informing models of L2 phonological acquisition and pedagogical approaches to suprasegmental training.
Keechan Hong (Wed,) studied this question.