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Study Abroad and the Second Language Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation in Spanish
Edited by Sara L. Zahler, Avizia Y. Long and Bret Linford
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 37] 2023
► pp. 112–146

Chapter 4
Acquiring dialect-specific yes-no question intonation during study abroad in Venezuela

| Weber State University

This study explores the L2 acquisition of regionally-indexed intonation during study abroad by investigating changes in L2 intonation over the course of a semester abroad in the Venezuelan Andes. Results indicated that even after a short period abroad (i.e., 14 weeks) learners not only increased frequency of a familiar pattern (i.e., falling contours for declaratives), but some also adopted new patterns (i.e., a regional circumflex contour for absolute interrogatives) to varying degrees. Five of nine learners adopted the regional circumflex absolute interrogative and the frequency of this feature showed variation across two stylistically-different tasks. The chapter concludes by discussing possible reasons for high levels of variation across individuals and then suggests areas for future research.

Keywords: study abroad, phonology, language variation, intonation, Spanish
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Literature review
    • Intonation
    • Second language intonation
    • Study abroad and Variationist SLA
  • Methodology
    • Subjects
    • Data collection
    • Data analysis
  • Results
    • Reading task
    • Stylistic variation
    • Learner Example (1) – Ed
    • Learner Example (2) – Leah
    • Learner Example (3) – Linda
    • Learner Example (4) – Kayla
    • Learner Example (5) – Gavin
    • Other learners
    • Summary and statistical analysis
  • Discussion
    • Research question #1
    • Research question #2
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 6 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.37.04tri
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