Intonation in English, French and German: Perception and Production

This article reports the results of three experiments which investigated the role of intonation in foreign accent. It was found that adult French, English and German speakers differ in the slopes (fundamental frequency divided by time) of their continuative intonation. Monolingual English and French children also differ in their continuative intonational slopes. Students who are native English speakers but attend French immersion schools, acquire appropriate French continuative intonation by age 10, but at age 16 they typically use English intonation when they speak French. A perception experiment showed that no language group chose intonation patterns with slopes based on native production data to be more native-like than those with slopes based on non-native data. Some remarks are made about language acquisition in the immersion setting and about convergence in intonational function.