Studying L2 suprasegmental features in Asian Englishes: A position paper

This position paper highlights the importance of suprasegmental training in secondary language (L2) acquisition. Suprasegmental features are manifested in terms of acoustic cues and convey important information about linguistic and information structures. Hence, L2 learners must harness appropriate suprasegmental productions for effective communication. However, this learning process is influenced by well-established perceptions of sounds and articulatory motions in the primary language (L1). We propose to design and collect a corpus to support systematic analysis of L2 suprasegmental features. We lay out a set of carefully selected textual environments that illustrate how suprasegmental features convey information including part-of-speech, syntax, focus, speech acts and semantics. We intend to use these textual environments for collecting speech data in a variety of Asian Englishes from non-native English speakers. Analyses of such corpora should lead to research findings that have important implications for language education, as well as speech technology development for computer-aided language learning (CALL) applications.