Native English listeners' perceptions of prosody in L1 and L2 reading

Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) was used to investigate listeners’ perceptions of prosody in reading by native and nonnative English speakers. RPT offers a language-independent tool to access listeners’ holistic understanding of prosody. Listeners hear an audio recording of speech while following along on an orthographic, unpunctuated transcript of the recording. They indicate their perception of phrasal boundaries or prominent words by marking them on the transcript in real time. Our listeners showed higher agreement for boundarymarking in the native speakers’ reading than the non-natives’. Listeners marked more boundaries in the non-natives’ reading, likely because the non-natives paused more often, although listeners partially compensated by not marking boundaries as often when non-natives made short pauses. For prominence, rates of agreement were higher for the non-natives. This may be due to listeners’ marking fewer prominences in the nonnatives’ reading, meaning that they agreed on the absence of prominent words. Compared to acoustic analysis, studying listener reactions provides more insight into what aspects of non-native prosody are most salient. This may be useful in guiding learners to the most effective ways to improve their prosody.