The perception of interrogativity by Japanese speakers of Dutch as a second language

• Published in: Linguistics in the Netherlands Vol. 22; pp. 139 - 150
• Main Authors: Niioka, Yuki, Caspers, Johanneke, van Heuven, Vincent J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 28.09.2005
• Subjects: Dutch; Intonation; Japanese; Questions; Second Language Learning; Speech Perception; Word Order
• ISSN: 0929-7332; 1569-9919
• DOI: 10.1075/avt.22.14nii

The effectiveness of intonation & subject + finite verb word-order inversion in Dutch yes/no questions for their perception as interrogatives by Japanese learners of Dutch as a second language is investigated in an experiment using three types of sentence stimuli with high vs low final boundary tones: inverted word order, direct word order, & direct word order with the addition of the sentence-final particle he marking an informal acknowledgement question. Japanese speakers of Dutch as a second language at proficiency levels from elementary to high advanced & Dutch native speaker controls (N = 10 each) used a five-point scale to judge the interrogativity of each stimulus; results indicate that both speaker groups identify inverted sentences with question intonation as interrogative, whereas inversion without question intonation is perceived as moderately questioning by native speakers & as nonquestions by learners. 5 Figures, 19 References. J. Hitchcock