Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2016, page 1 of 31.
doi:10.1017/S0272263116000267

TBLT INSTRUCTIONAL EFFECTS
ON TONAL ALIGNMENT AND PITCH
RANGE IN L2 SPANISH IMPERATIVES
VERSUS DECLARATIVES

Sean McKinnon
Indiana University

The present study investigates the prosody/pragmatics interface in
TBLT by extending the traditional morphological focus-on-form to a
focus on intonational forms, with Spanish declaratives and imperatives.
Twenty-eight intermediate L2 Spanish learners were assigned to one
of two conditions that differed in the type of focus-on-form present
during the pre- and posttask phases of a focused, task-based intervention: focus on grammar (FOG) or focus on grammar + intonation
(FOG + I). All participants were administered an oral discourse completion task in a pre- and a posttest that elicited Spanish imperatives
and declaratives to measure gains. Results show that participants,
regardless of condition, did not distinguish imperatives from declaratives using intonation in the pretest. However, participants in the FOG +
I condition modified their pitch range and pitch accents in the posttest
First and foremost, I would like to thank the guest editors, Professor Laura GurzynskiWeiss, Avizia Y. Long, and Megan Solon, for their insightful and constructive feedback
on early drafts of this article as well as their encouragement throughout the research
process. I also want to thank all those who supported me during the different aspects of
data collection, from assistance in the creation of the oral DCT items (Ángel Milla Muñoz),
to the instructors of the task-based intervention (Gabriela Quispe for the pilot and Gloria
Navajas Sánchez for data presented in this article), as well as the content course instructors
who allowed me to recruit from their classes (Professor Patrícia Amaral, Silvina Bongiovanni,
Professor Manuel Díaz-Campos, Iraida Galarza, Jordan Garrett, Professor Laura GurzynksiWeiss, Maria Hasler-Barker, Erin Lavin, Bret Linford, Avizia Long, Megan Solon, and Sara
Zahler). Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues in the Spring 2014 S716 SLA seminar in
Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning, Margaret Glide, Daniel Jung, Pilar Prieto, the
audience members at the 6th International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching
(Leuven, Belgium), and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on
early presentations or drafts of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sean McKinnon,
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, 355 North Jordan Avenue, GISB 2160, Bloomington,
IN 47405, USA. E-mail: samckinn@indiana.edu
© Cambridge University Press 2016

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Sean McKinnon
to signal a difference between imperatives and declaratives, though
their use was different from the input provided by a native speaker
instructor.

Task-based language teaching and learning (TBLT) is both an empirical
line of study and a pedagogical framework, with aims of providing optimal
opportunities for acquiring a second language (L2) through the accomplishment of real-world tasks within meaningful context. Despite these
overarching goals, certain aspects of L2 development, such as prosody
and pragmatics, have been largely ignored in the TBLT experimental
literature. Given the central role of the prosody-pragmatics interface
in many languages, including Spanish (Escandell-Vidal, 2011; Prieto &
Roseano, 2010), research examining the possibility of tasks to encourage
attention to these areas of the L2 is needed.
The present study seeks to open a dialogue in the TBLT literature on
the intersection of prosody and pragmatics in SLA. Specifically, this study
examines if intonation, and by extension its pragmatic functions, can be
instructed through a task-based, focus-on-form intervention (Ellis, 2009;
Long, 2014). To assess this question, the current study utilized two linguistic constructions in Spanish that have an identical morphological
form but can be differentiated through prosody to express two different
pragmatic functions: declaratives and imperatives. This experiment
provides evidence that task-based instruction can be designed to
encourage noticing of intonational cues (e.g., pitch accents and boundary
tones) used to express pragmatic functions.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The Prosody-Pragmatics Interface
Whereas segmental phonology investigates individual phonological segments of a language (e.g., /p/, /t/, /k/), prosody examines how languages
organize segments into larger units, such as syllables and phrases. The
focus of the present study is intonation (i.e., variation in pitch that does
not create lexical contrasts). Currently, intonation is generally analyzed
through language-specific tones and breaks indices (ToBI) labeling
systems, which are couched in the autosegmental-metrical (AM) framework (Ladd, 1996; Pierrehumbert, 1980). The AM framework proposes
that intonation is organized around a series of abstract high (H) and low
(L) tones that are phonetically realized through rises and falls in the
fundamental frequency (F0); pitch is the F0 perceptual correlate. For
example, speakers increase their F0 to reach a H tone target; conversely,
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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speakers decrease their F0 to reach a L tone target. In this framework,
F0 movement is analyzed at two different points in an utterance: (a) metrically strong syllables of individual words, which are called pitch accents;
and (b) breaks in the prosodic unit, which are called boundary tones.
In Spanish ToBI (e.g., Hualde & Prieto, 2015), pitch accents occur at
lexically stressed syllables, while boundary tones appear at the end of
minor and major breaks in the prosodic unit; these are called intermediate and intonational phrases, respectively. There are two types of pitch
accents in Spanish: (a) monotonal, in which there is plateau in F0 across
the stressed syllable; and (b) bitonal, in which there is F0 movement
during or after the stressed syllable. In Spanish ToBI notation, the tonal
target associated with pitch accent is marked as an asterisk. Figure 1
presents a schematic representation of pitch accents found in the present study, with the stressed syllable highlighted in dark gray and the
nonstressed syllables appearing in white.
To exemplify the differences in pitch accent, let us use the word
novela “novel,” which is lexically stressed on the syllable –ve–. For the
monotonal pitch accents, –ve– would be labeled H* if there was a high
F0 plateau, while L* would indicate a low F0 plateau. For the bitonal
pitch accents, the notation H+L* would signal a high F0 plateau on the
syllable no–, followed by a decrease in F0 at the beginning of –ve–. The
notations L+H* and L+>H* signify a F0 rise in the stressed syllable that
either reaches its peak in the stressed syllable (i.e., L+H*) or in the posttonic syllable –la (i.e., L+>H*, with the greater-than sign indicating a
delay in the F0 peak); this difference in tonal alignment—that is, the
temporal movements of F0 across segments—is an important distinction in the present study. Finally, the notation L* +H is used to signal a L
tone target in the stressed syllable that is followed by a F0 rise in the
posttonic syllable –la.

Figure 1. Schematic representation of some Spanish pitch accents and
nuclear configurations (taken from Aguilar, de-la-Mota, & Prieto, 2009).
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Sean McKinnon

Another important aspect of Spanish intonation is the nuclear configuration of an utterance, which is the combination of the final pitch accent and an
intonational phrase boundary tone. Previous research has proposed that
the nuclear configuration can convey pragmatic meaning in Spanish; for
example, changes in the nuclear configuration can be used to distinguish
between sentences that are morphologically identical in Spanish, such as
declarative statements and questions, different types of questions, and
imperative versus declarative utterances (Prieto & Roseano, 2010). Similar
to the pitch accents, the intonational phrase boundary tone can be monotonal or bitonal, and in ToBI notation it is represented with a percent sign.
Figure 2 presents a schematic representation of some possible nuclear configurations in Spanish, with the boundary tone highlighted in light gray.

Figure 2. Schematic representation of some Spanish nuclear configurations (taken from Aguilar et al., 2009).
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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We will focus on two nuclear configurations that this study’s native
speaker instructor used to distinguish between imperative and declarative utterances, using the utterance devuelve la novela “s/he returns
the novel”: L* L% and H+L* L%. In the former, the stressed syllable in
the final word novela (i.e., –ve–) receives a low plateau tone (i.e., L*),
while the posttonic syllable –la receives a low boundary tone (i.e., L%);
this pattern was found exclusively with declarative sentences, as can be
seen in Figure 3.
The other nuclear configuration found with the native speaker instructor
was H+L* L%. With this pattern there is a F0 decrease in the final stressed
syllable –ve– (i.e., H+L*), which continues in the posttonic syllable –la
with a low boundary tone (i.e., L%). An example from present study is
presented in Figure 4.
L2 ACQUISITION OF PROSODY
Research on L2 prosody has investigated topics such as how L2 prosody
can contribute to the perception of foreign accent (Munro & Derwing,
1995; van Els & de Bot, 1987), the transfer of first language (L1) prosodic
patterns to the L2 (Gabriel & Kireva, 2014; Maastricht, Krahmer, &
Swerts, 2016; Mennen, 2004; Swerts & Zerbian, 2010), and the effects of
length of residence on L2 prosody (Trofimovich & Baker, 2006). Research
has also demonstrated that learners may use different prosodic cues from
native speakers to produce meaningful L2 distinctions. For example, L1
Japanese learners of English can use differences in pitch to mark stress

Figure 3. Waveform and pitch contour of the declarative target utterance devuelve la novela “s/he returns the novel” from the native speaker
instructor.
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Sean McKinnon

Figure 4. Waveform and pitch contour of the imperative target utterance devuelve la novela “return-IMP the novel” from the native speaker
instructor.
in English instead of duration (Aoyama & Guion, 2007), and L1 Zulu
learners of English can mark contrastive focus equally for both noun
phrases instead of only for the focused noun phrase (Swerts & Zerbian,
2010). Furthermore, there is evidence that the incorporation of more
prosodic forms into the learner’s interlanguage may decrease the
consistency and increase the variability of L2 prosody before becoming
more targetlike (Henriksen, Geeslin, & Willis, 2010).
Previous research has shown that increases in L2 proficiency (Henriksen
et al., 2010; Maastricht et al., 2016; Swerts & Zerbian, 2010; Trofimovich &
Baker, 2006) and increased awareness of target language (TL) prosodic
forms (Hardison, 2004; Pennington & Ellis, 2000; Ramírez Verdugo, 2006)
may facilitate the acquisition of targetlike prosodic forms. For example,
Pennington and Ellis (2000) found that Ll Cantonese learners of English
significantly improved their recognition of the pragmatic distinction
between focus and neutral sentences when their attention was drawn to
the use of stress. Additionally, Hardison (2004) reported that L1 English
learners of French modified their prosodic output when shown their own
pitch contours compared to a native speaker’s prosodic production in real
time. Researchers have also stressed the importance of teaching intonation in context (Jenkins, 2004; Levis & Pickering, 2004), which makes it
even more surprising that researchers have not yet attempted to teach
intonation through real-world tasks. For the present study, a focus-onform, tasked-based intervention was created to encourage learners to
notice prosodic forms in the input and how they are used to make a pragmatic distinction in Spanish between imperatives and declaratives.
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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THE TARGET STRUCTURE: SPANISH IMPERATIVES VERSUS
DECLARATIVES
There has been empirical interest in Spanish imperative and declarative
intonation (Navarro Tomás, 1944; Robles-Puente, 2011; Willis, 2002),
partially due to both types of utterances utilizing the same morphological form. This morphological congruence can lead to ambiguity, as
shown in (1), which can be resolved using prosody.
(1) Declarative: Corta las cebollas “S/he cuts the onions”
Imperative: Corta las cebollas “Cut the onions”

Although there are other contextual cues (e.g., nonverbal cues, the
relationship between the conversational participants, and previous discourse) that can help contribute to an utterance’s meaning, prosody
can also play a crucial role in limiting the number of possible interpretations an utterance can have (Wilson & Wharton, 2006).
With respect to declarative utterances, the most common intonation
pattern found in the 10 Spanish varieties surveyed in Prieto and Roseano
(2010) contained a rising pitch accent on the verb and a L* L% nuclear
configuration (i.e., a final low tone and a low boundary tone; see Figure 3).
Despite this cross-dialectal convention for signaling a declarative sentence, there does not seem to be a single way to express the imperative
found across all Spanish varieties. The literature thus far has shown
that different (and sometimes conflicting) prosodic cues can express
the imperative, including lengthened tonic syllables (Prieto & Roseano,
2010; Willis, 2002), shorter tonic syllables (Navarro Tomás, 1944), wider
tonal ranges (Navarro Tomás, 1944; Prieto & Roseano, 2010; RoblesPuente, 2011; Willis, 2002), and nuclear configurations, including H+L* L%
(Prieto & Roseano, 2010; see Figure 4).
With respect to the L1 of the learners in the present study, the standard
pattern for English declaratives is a final falling tone (Bolinger, 1998;
Hirschberg, 2004; O’Connor & Arnold, 1961; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg,
1990; Tench, 1996) that is either preceded by a plateau (Hirschberg,
2004; O’Connor & Arnold, 1961; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990), a
rise (Bolinger, 1998) or a fall (Bolinger, 1998; O’Connor & Arnold, 1961).
However, some American English speakers can also use a final rising
tone with declarative sentences, a phenomenon that is popularly known
as uptalk (Warren, 2016). With regard to English imperatives, it has been
claimed that there is a final falling tone (Bolinger, 1998; O’Connor &
Arnold, 1961; Tench, 1996) that can be preceded by either a low tone
plateau (O’Connor & Arnold, 1961) or a falling or rising prenuclear tone
(Bolinger, 1998). As can be seen from these studies, there does not
appear to be one way to express imperatives or declaratives in English.
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Sean McKinnon

However, it should be noted that, to the author’s knowledge, there
has been no systematic investigation of the pragmatics-prosody
interface using English ToBI like what has been conducted in Spanish
(e.g., Prieto & Roseano, 2010); in fact, Hirschberg (2004, p. 24) notes
that for English ToBI “[the] study of the contribution of intonational
contours to overall utterance interpretation has so far been confined
to a few contours.”
Consequently, the acquisition of the Spanish imperative-declarative
distinction using prosody may be challenging for L1 English speakers
because it appears that both pragmatic functions employ a final
falling tone in English (Bolinger, 1998; Hirschberg, 2004; O’Connor &
Arnold, 1961; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990; Tench, 1996); this is
to say, L1 English learners of Spanish will have to acquire a new prosodic distinction that may not exist in their L1. Although there may
be other cues at their disposal (e.g., nonverbal and discursive), the
addition of appropriate prosodic cues may help to make it easier for
native speakers to recognize the pragmatic intention behind a learner’s
utterance.
Additionally, native speakers of Spanish have different prosodic
resources in their linguistic repertoire to express the imperative, which
may reflect their variety of Spanish (Prieto & Roseano, 2010) or simply
their idiolect (Willis, 2002); given that the prosodic expression of
imperativity appears to be variable: (a) this may present a potential
learnability issue for learners, who could benefit from an instructional
intervention because there is not a one-to-one mapping of prosodic
form to pragmatic function; and (b) research investigating possible
instructional effects should take into account the type of prosodic input
made available to the L2 (i.e., the instructor’s own production patterns)
when examining whether L2 output is moving in a targetlike direction.
THE PRESENT STUDY
The present study investigated the potential to use a focused, task-based
intervention to encourage the noticing of a pragmatic distinction between
imperatives and declaratives through intonation in Spanish. The study
is motivated by three observations: (a) there is a strong connection
between prosody and expressing real-world meaning in Spanish
(Escandell-Vidal, 2011; Prieto & Roseano, 2010); (b) previous research
has suggested the possibility of misunderstandings between learners
and native speakers due to nontargetlike L2 prosody (Ramírez Verdugo,
2005; Ramírez Verdugo & Romero Trillo, 2005); and (c) awareness to
prosodic form (Hardison, 2004; Pennington & Ellis, 2000; Ramírez Verdugo,
2006) in contextualized settings (Jenkins, 2004; Levis & Pickering, 2004)
can improve L2 prosodic output.
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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There were two main research questions that guided the present
investigation.
1. Does focus on grammatical + intonational form during a focused, task-based
intervention lead to increased improvement on producing a pragmatic distinction between imperative and declarative utterances using intonation as
compared to focus on grammatical form?
2. After a focused, task-based intervention, do L2 learners use the same phonetic
cues as those provided in the input by a native speaker instructor to distinguish between declarative and imperative utterances?

METHOD
Participants
Forty-five third-year L2 Spanish learners enrolled in introductory Spanish
content courses (i.e., institutionally defined as intermediate learners) at
a large American university volunteered to participate in the present
study in exchange for extra credit. Sixteen participants were excluded
because they were heritage speakers of Spanish or because all of their
productions contained disfluencies and/or a creaky voice.1 The final
sample of 28 L2 Spanish learners were L1 English speakers and began
acquiring Spanish in a foreign language classroom beginning at ages 12–13.
In addition to the L2 learners, a native speaker of Andalusian Spanish participated as the instructor of the focused, task-based intervention.

Procedure
The experiment took place in an otherwise empty computer lab with
individual computers and headset microphones to record the participants’ speech. The untimed experiment was divided into three phases—
a pretest, the task-based intervention, and a posttest—and took
approximately one hour to complete (e.g., 20 minutes for the pretest,
20–30 minutes for the intervention, and 5–10 minutes for the posttest).
The task-based intervention was conducted entirely in Spanish; the
instructions in the pre- and posttest were given in English.
Participants were assigned to one of two types of the task-based
intervention: the focus on grammatical form condition (FOG) or the
focus on grammatical + intonational form (FOG + I) condition. Each of the
experimental sessions was limited to a maximum of 10 students. Students
could choose one of six possible sessions, which were randomly assigned
a type beforehand (three FOG sessions and three FOG + I sessions),
based on their availability.
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Sean McKinnon

PRETEST: ORAL DISCOURSE COMPLETION TASK
Upon arriving at the computer lab, participants were assigned to a computer on which there was a PowerPoint presentation of an oral discourse
completion task (oral DCT; see Félix-Brasdefer, 2010, for an overview). An
oral DCT provides participants with a series of discourse contexts created
by the researcher that are intended to elicit a particular response, in this
case, imperatives and declaratives. After reading the discourse contexts
participants are prompted to respond to the situation. However, to standardize the responses among all participants they were prompted to produce the target utterance. Although this type of data collection may not
elicit wholly natural speech, oral DCTs have been widely used in both
pragmatics (Félix-Brasdefer, 2010) and laboratory phonology (Prieto &
Roseano, 2010) because they can target the linguistic structure of interest.
During the oral DCT, participants were asked to produce nine imperative utterances and nine declarative utterances (which constituted minimal pairs), as well as seven distractor items from Prieto and Roseano
(2010).2 All target utterances were comprised of the following structure:
verb (three syllables) + definite article (one syllable) + noun (two to four
syllables). In line with previous research, the number of sonorant segments (e.g., vowels, liquids, and nasals) was maximized in order to obtain
a continuous pitch contour. The discourse contexts were then created to
match the target utterances.
To ensure that participants produced these declarative and imperative minimal pairs, the discourse context was manipulated using the
second line of the production prompt. For example, in the declarative
context the participants read a situation in which they were to inform
their interlocutor what another character was doing, whereas in the
imperative context participants ordered someone to do something. To
ensure that participants interpreted the imperative context as requiring
them to force their interlocutor to perform an action the closed prompt
read “order him: [target utterance],” while for the declarative contexts
the prompt was “you say: [target utterance].”
After the completion of three practice items, participants were presented with a pseudorandomized order of 25 slides that each contained
a discourse context followed by the two speech elicitation prompts. The
participants’ audio was captured through a headset microphone and
recorded using the software program Audacity (Audacity Team, 2014).
TASK-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL SESSION
Following Ellis’s (2009) definition of a task (i.e., a meaning-focused
activity involving some kind of gap for which learners have to rely largely
on their own resources to complete and for which there is an outcome
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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other than language use), this study’s task-based intervention—which
was centered around recipes—was a focused task designed to have
participants practice the imperative-declarative contrast. The task was
divided into three task phases—pretask, during task, and posttask—that
began immediately after the last participant completed the pretest.
During the pretask phase, the instructor went over the 10 steps
necessary to make a Spanish omelet by ordering the researcher to
“perform” the actions (i.e., imperatives) and then narrating what the
researcher was doing (i.e., declaratives).3 In this way, both types of
pragmatic utterances with morphologically identical forms—and, by
extension, their prosodic cues—were available in the input for both
groups of learners. During this phase, the instructor engaged the FOG
students in conscious awareness-raising (Schmidt, 1993) of the imperative’s grammatical form by asking learners if they knew how the imperative was formed in Spanish, followed by a demonstration of how to
conjugate it. In the FOG + I condition, learners received the same
instruction on how to grammatically form the imperative, and in addition they received instruction on the prosodic differences between the
two. First, the instructor asked the students if they heard a difference
between the declarative and imperative utterances during the recipe
demonstration. Afterward, the instructor shared with the students that,
although the forms of the imperative and declarative look identical to one
another, intonation can be used to distinguish the two. The instructor
then redemonstrated the prosodic differences between the two utterances by returning to the first two steps of the recipe and saying each
one first in the imperative and then in the declarative form, instructing
the class that the imperative form has una entonación fuerte “a strong
intonation.” This was all the explicit instruction on intonation that the
students in FOG + I received (e.g., the instructor did not teach students
that a fall in the final pitch accent before the end of the intonational
phrase can signal the imperative).
In the during-task phase, the instructor gave each participant an
authentic Hispanic recipe for which they had to gather paper cutout
ingredients from the front of the lab. Upon completion, participants
were told that they were to give their ingredients to their partner and
make them “cook” the recipe by ordering them through the recipe’s
steps; participants switched roles when the first recipe was completed.
The instructor did not interact with the students during this phase
unless they had a question. Furthermore, there was no difference in
the lesson plan for this phase of the task-based intervention between
conditions.
Although no feedback was provided to the two conditions in the
during-task phase, the participants did receive feedback specific to
their condition in the posttask phase, which was a public performance
of the during-task work. More specifically, the FOG condition received
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Sean McKinnon

metalinguistic (Lyster & Ranta, 1997) feedback if there was an error
with the grammatical form of the imperative, whereas the FOG + I condition
received metalinguistic feedback if the instructor did not perceive an
intonational difference between declaratives and imperatives. When
this occurred, she reminded students that the imperative has una entonación fuerte “a strong intonation,” like the example in (2).
(2) Recuérdate que hay una entonación especial con los mandatos que es más fuerte
que la de las frases normales. Por ejemplo, puedes decir “hierve el pescado” para
las frases normales pero “hierve el pescado” para los mandatos. “Remember,
that there’s a special intonation with commands that’s stronger than the
one with normal sentences. For example, you can say hierve el pescado ‘boil
the fish’ for the normal sentences but hierve el pescado ‘boil the fish’ [with
falling tone on pescado ‘fish’] for commands.”

It is important to note that, again, there was no explicit instruction on
which intonational cues the students needed to modify in order to distinguish imperatives and declaratives.
POSTTEST
Immediately after completing the task-based intervention, participants
were instructed to return to their individual computers to complete
the posttest; participants received a new version of the pretest with
a different presentation order of the 25 slides. As with the pretest, participants’ productions were recorded using their headset microphone
in Audacity.
PHONETIC ANALYSIS
Four phonetic cues were measured in Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2015)
to explore three different aspects of intonation: pitch range (for both
the noun and verb), tonal alignment of the verb’s pitch accent (i.e., the
syllable in which the F0 rise or fall began, if any), and the nuclear
configuration. For the pitch ranges, the maximum and minimum pitch
values associated with the pitch accents were measured in Hertz (Hz)
and converted to the equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB) scale
(Glasberg & Moore, 1990). This conversion has been used in previous
research because it “gives a better approximation of the perceptual
distance between F0 levels (i.e., the measures of F0 magnitude) and
allows more easily for the comparison of male and female data”
(Henriksen, 2012, p. 547). The verb’s pitch accent and the utterance’s
nuclear configuration were categorized according to the most recent
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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revision of Spanish ToBI (Hualde & Prieto, 2015). The rises and falls
were manually determined by locating the pitch elbows, which is either
the point where a low tone begins to clearly rise or the point where the
high tone begins to clearly fall. Figure 5 provides an example of how
these cues were identified and measured.
The first tier of the labeling system contains an orthographic transcription of the utterance, and the second tier contains the phonetic
transcription. In the third tier each pitch elbow is marked, along with
their corresponding F0 values in Hz. Finally, in the last tier the Spanish
ToBI labels for pitch accents and boundary tones are annotated.
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
The 18 oral DCT utterances from the native speaker instructor (i.e., nine
imperative and nine declarative utterances) were analyzed separately
from the 686 L2 target utterances. The theoretical number of utterances
from the 28 learners was 1,008; in total, 322 L2 target utterances were
excluded from analysis (31.9% of the data), due to disfluencies in speech
(N = 135) or creaky voice (N = 187) because they distorted the visible
pitch contour.
Descriptive statistics for the pitch ranges revealed that the data was
not normal for the instructor and the learners.4 A series of Wilcoxon
Signed-Rank tests were performed for the instructor, and for the learners

Figure 5. Measurement of pitch range and classification of pitch accents
and nuclear configuration of the imperative target utterance añade la
harina “add-IMP the flour” from the instructor.
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14

Sean McKinnon

the pitch ranges were submitted to log transformation to create a normal distribution before being submitted for analysis using a generalized
linear mixed model (GLMM) in SPSS (IBM Corporation, 2011).5 A mixedeffects modeling was chosen because it can take into account random
factors—in this case, learners’ individual differences and the individual
target utterances—when modeling the outcome. The GLMM examined the
two continuous dependent variables according to three fixed factors:
condition (FOG vs. FOG + I), time (pretest vs. posttest), and pragmatic
intention (intended imperative vs. intended declarative contexts). For
both the instructor and the learners, the pitch accents and nuclear configurations were analyzed according to their frequency distribution.
RESULTS
Native Speaker Intonational Patterns
The results from the series of Wilcoxon Signed-Rank tests indicated that
for the native speaker instructor the imperative ranks were not statistically different than declarative ranks for verb pitch range (Z = −1.63,
p = .11). The frequency distribution for the instructor’s tonal alignment
of the verb’s pitch accent and the utterance’s nuclear configuration
is provided in Table 1, and examples of declarative and imperative
utterances were provided in Figures 3 and 4.
As can be seen in Table 1, the verb pitch accents in the declarative
and imperative contexts showed one of two patterns: (a) a low tone
throughout the stressed syllable followed by a rise in the posttonic syllable (L* +H; see Figure 3) or (b) a rise throughout the stressed syllable
that reaches its peak in the posttonic syllable (L+>H*; see Figure 4).
However, there was a clear difference in the target utterance’s nuclear
configuration depending on the pragmatic context: Declarative sentences were realized as a low tone throughout the stressed syllable of
the last word in the phrase followed by a fall or a continued low plateau
(L* L%; see Figure 3); for imperatives, there was a fall associated with
the stressed syllable of the last word in the phrase followed by a low
Table 1. Verb pitch accents and nuclear configuration for the
instructor
Intended pragmatic intention
Declaratives
Imperatives

Verb pitch accent
L* +H (n = 3)
L+>H* (n = 6)
L* +H (n = 3)
L+>H* (n = 6)

Nuclear configuration
L* L% (n = 9)
H+L* L% (n = 9)

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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

15

plateau (H+L* L%; see Figure 4). This final fall was also captured by the
significant difference in the noun’s pitch range, which was greater in
imperative target utterances than declarative ones (Z = −2.87, p = 0.004).
Thus, it appears that the native speaker instructor of this study makes
a pragmatic distinction between the morphologically identical imperative and declarative utterances based only on the utterance’s nuclear
configuration.
After this statistical analysis was conducted, the researcher met with
the instructor to raise her consciousness of how she makes a pragmatic
distinction through the nuclear configuration by showing her images
like the ones in Figures 3 and 4 along with playing the corresponding
sound files. This was done so that she would be able to listen for differences in the final pitch accent and boundary tone in the FOG + I participants in order to provide corrective feedback. However, it is important
to note that all participants had access to the nuclear configuration
difference in the input during the pre- and posttask phases of the
task-based instructional session, although the learners’ attention was
not drawn to it in the FOG condition.
LEARNER INTONATIONAL PATTERNS
Verb’s Pitch Accent Range
The GLMM analysis revealed main effects in the pitch range of the verb for
time, F(1, 677) = 13.97, p < .001, and pragmatic intention, F(1, 677) = 13.95,
p < .001; overall, the verb pitch range was larger in the posttest (M = −1.10
ERB, SD = 0.09 ERB) than the pretest (M = −1.32 ERB, SD = 0.09 ERB), and
this difference yielded a large effect size, d = 2.44. Furthermore, target
utterances that were produced in an imperative context had a larger
pitch range (M = −1.10 ERB, SD = 0.09 ERB) than utterances in the declarative context (M = −1.32 ERB, SD = 0.09 ERB); this difference also yielded
a large effect size, d = 2.44. There was no main effect for condition,
F(1, 677) = 0.46, p = .499.
There was a statistically significant interaction between condition and
time, F(1, 677) = 13.28, p < .001. Overall, the posttest target utterances in
FOG + I had the largest verb pitch range (M = −0.94 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB),
followed by the posttest in the FOG condition (M = −1.26 ERB, SD = 0.13
ERB), the pretest in the FOG condition (M = −1.27 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB),
and the pretest in the FOG + I condition (M = −1.37 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB).
There was also a significant interaction between condition and pragmatic intention, F(1, 677) = 7.73, p = .006. Overall, the FOG + I imperative
utterances had the largest verb pitch range (M = −0.96 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB),
followed by FOG imperatives (M = −1.23 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB), FOG declarative utterances (M = −1.29 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB), and FOG + I declaratives
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Sean McKinnon

(M = −1.35 ERB, SD = 0.12 ERB). However, there were no significant interactions between time and pragmatic intention, F(1, 677) = 3.58, p = .059,
or time, pragmatic intention, and condition, F(1, 677) = 1.55, p = .213.
Despite the nonsignificant three-way interaction (see Figure 6), a series
of Bonferroni post hoc tests were conducted to examine the relationship
of these three variables.
To answer the first research question regarding whether there were
differences between FOG and FOG + I after the task-based intervention,
three main points are presented along with results from the supporting
post hoc tests for the verb’s pitch range. First, there were no differences
between conditions before the instructional session. In the pretest, the
FOG and FOG + I conditions did not significantly differ from each other
on their values for declaratives, t676 = 1.04, p = .298, or imperatives, t676 =
0.09, p = .932. Furthermore, before the instructional session, there was
no significant difference between imperatives and declaratives for the
FOG condition, t676 = 0.15, p = .881, or for the FOG + I condition, t676 = 1.74,
p = .082, although it marginally differed in the FOG + I condition (i.e., CI
for FOG + I comparison was [−0.03, 0.42]).
Second, changes were observed in the verb’s pitch range after the
intervention for the FOG + I group but not for the FOG group. There was
a significant difference between the imperative target utterances in the

Figure 6.

Mean log of the verb’s pitch range.

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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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FOG + I condition between the posttest (M = −0.66 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB)
and pretest (M = −1.27 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB) with respect to the verb’s
pitch range, t676 = 2.21, p = .027; this was a large effect, d = 4.36. This
result means that, in the posttest, the FOG + I group increased the verb’s
pitch range with imperative utterances from the results in the pretest.
However, there was also a significant increase in the verb’s pitch range
between the pretest (M = −1.47 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB) and the posttest
(M = −1.22 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB) with the declarative sentences of the
FOG + I condition. This yielded a large effect size, d = 1.79, albeit not as large
as the effect size observed with imperatives. Significant differences
were not observed between the pre- and posttest values for the FOG
condition for declaratives, t676 = 0.27, p = .786, or imperatives, t676 = 0.36,
p = .719. These post hoc tests show that, whereas the FOG learners did
not modify the verb’s pitch range in the posttest, FOG + I learners did
modify output, moving in a targetlike trajectory to be able to modify
intonation.
Third, significant differences were observed between imperatives
and declaratives for the FOG + I group after the instructional session,
t676 = 4.91, p < .001, but not for the FOG group, t676 = 0.82, p = .410. In FOG
+ I condition, the verb pitch range on the posttest was larger with
imperatives (M = −0.66 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB) than declaratives (M = −1.22
ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB). These values yielded a large effect size for this
difference, d = 4.00, meaning that FOG + I learners were able to utilize
the verb’s pitch range to make a distinction between imperative and
declarative utterances. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant
difference in the posttest imperative utterances between conditions,
t676 = 2.98, p = .003, with the FOG + I condition showing a larger verb
pitch range (M = −0.66 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB) than the FOG condition
(M = −1.21 ERB, SD = 0.14 ERB); this was also a large effect size, d = 3.93.
This finding for the FOG + I condition shows that they are moving in a targetlike direction toward using intonation to make a pragmatic distinction.
Taken together, these post hoc tests demonstrate that learners in the
FOG + I condition made a pragmatic distinction between imperatives
and declaratives with the verb’s pitch range, whereas the FOG learners
did not modify this intonational cue, nor did they use it distinguish
between two morphologically identical forms with different pragmatic
meanings. Because the only difference between the two conditions was
the type of focus-on-form present in the task-based intervention, there
is some evidence that the explicit focus on grammatical and prosodic
form may have encouraged participants to notice an intonational difference between imperatives and declaratives and to subsequently modify
their output in the posttest. Although native speakers of Spanish may
utilize tonal range to signal a pragmatic distinction between imperatives
and declaratives (Navarro Tomás, 1944; Prieto & Roseano, 2010; RoblesPuente, 2011; Willis, 2002), the native speaker of the present study did not
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18

Sean McKinnon

employ this intonational cue; therefore, the use of the verb’s tonal range
in the FOG + I condition may be an interlanguage feature if we directly compare the L2 learners’ results to the input they received in the intervention.
NOUN’S PITCH ACCENT RANGE
With regard to the noun’s pitch range, the GLMM analysis revealed that
there were no main effects for time, F(1, 677) = 0.02, p = .894, pragmatic
intention, F(1, 677) = 0.00, p = 1.000, or condition, F(1, 677) = 3.07, p = .080.
There was a statistically significant interaction between condition and
pragmatic intention, F(1, 677) = 6.72, p = .010. Overall, the FOG declarative
utterances had the largest noun pitch range (M = −1.65 ERB, SD = 0.15 ERB),
followed by FOG imperative utterances (M = −1.83 ERB, SD = 0.15 ERB), FOG
+ I imperative utterances (M = −1.95 ERB, SD = 0.15 ERB), and FOG + I declaratives (M = −2.12 ERB, SD = 0.15 ERB). There was also a statistically significant interaction between time and pragmatic intention, F(1, 677) = 8.64,
p = .003. Overall, the pretest declarative utterances had the largest noun
pitch range (M = −1.78 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB), followed by posttest imperative
utterances (M = −1.79 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB), pretest imperative utterances
(M = −1.98 ERB, SD = 0.13 ERB), and posttest declaratives (M = −1.99 ERB,
SD = 0.13 ERB). There were no significant interactions observed between
condition and time, F(1, 677) = 1.13, p = .289, or time, pragmatic intention,
and condition, F(1, 677) = 1.83, p = .177. Despite the nonsignificant threeway interaction (see Figure 7), a series of Bonferroni post hoc tests were
conducted to better examine the relationship of these three variables.
With the goal of continuing the discussion of the findings for the first
research question, the following three points are presented along with
their supporting post hoc tests for the noun’s pitch range. However, it
should be noted that the 95% CI error bars in Figure 7 suggest a great
deal of individual variation in the data.
To begin, there were few differences between the conditions before
the task-based intervention. In the pretest, the FOG and FOG + I conditions
did not significantly differ from each other on their values for declaratives, t676 = 1.49, p = .137, or imperatives, t676 = 0.65, p = .514. Furthermore,
there was no significant difference between declaratives and imperatives in the FOG + I condition, t676 = 1.49, p = .137. However, the FOG
condition did have a statistically significant difference between these
two pragmatic contexts in the pretest, t676 = 1.97, p = .050, with declaratives exhibiting a larger noun pitch range (M = −1.63 ERB, SD = 0.17 ERB)
than imperatives (M = −1.92 ERB, SD = 0.17 ERB); this yielded a large
effect size, d = 1.71. However, it is important to note that learners in the
FOG condition made a pragmatic distinction based on the noun’s pitch
range differently from the instructor, who distinguished declaratives
and imperatives through a larger noun pitch range with imperatives.
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

Figure 7.

19

Mean log of the noun’s pitch range.

Second, there were some changes in the noun’s pitch range after the
task-based intervention for FOG + I but not for FOG. There was a significant difference between the declarative target utterances in the FOG + I
condition between the pretest (M = −1.94 ERB, SD = 0.16 ERB) and posttest (M = −2.31 ERB, SD = 0.16 ERB) with respect to the noun’s pitch
range, t676 = 2.84, p = .005; this was a large effect, d = 2.31. This finding
indicates that in the posttest the FOG + I condition decreased the noun’s
pitch range of declarative utterances. However, there was not a significant difference between imperatives in the pre- and posttest, t676 = 1.55,
p = .122. The FOG condition maintained values for imperatives, t676 =
−1.23, p = .220, and declaratives, t676 = 0.32, p = .747, that resulted in
nonsignificant differences between the pre- and posttests. It seems that
the FOG + I condition only modified the noun’s pitch range for declarative sentences, whereas the verb’s pitch range of imperative utterances
increased in the posttest.
Finally, for the FOG + I condition, there was a significant difference
between imperatives and declaratives in the posttest, t676 = 3.50, p <
.001, but not for the FOG condition, t676 = 0.52, p = .606. The noun pitch
range for participants in the FOG + I condition on the posttest was larger
with imperatives (M = −1.84 ERB, SD = 0.16 ERB) than declaratives
(M = −2.31 ERB, SD = 0.16 ERB); this difference yielded a large effect size,
d = 2.94. This result suggests a modification in a targetlike direction
given that the native speaker instructor also demonstrated larger noun
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20

Sean McKinnon

pitch range with imperatives than declaratives. Furthermore, there was
a statistically significant difference in the posttest declarative utterances
between conditions, t676 = 3.13, p = .002, with the FOG + I condition
showing a smaller range in nouns (M = −2.31 ERB, SD = 0.16 ERB) than
the FOG condition (M = −1.68 ERB, SD = 0.17 ERB). This was also was a
large effect size, d = 3.76. This result seems to indicate an effect of the
type of instruction present in the task-based intervention.
These results for the noun’s pitch range provide evidence that the
intonational change in FOG + I condition was the result of the focuson-form these participants received in the task-based intervention that
explicitly featured a focus on intonational form in addition to grammatical form; furthermore, this modification was not found in the posttest
of the FOG groups. However, unlike the verb pitch range modifications
observed with the imperatives, with the noun pitch range we actually
see modification of the declarative utterances in the FOG + I condition;
these learners decreased noun pitch range in declarative utterances to
make the pragmatic distinction instead of increasing the noun’s pitch
range in the imperative context as the instructor does.
TONAL ALIGNMENT OF THE VERB’S PITCH ACCENT
As was previously defined, tonal alignment refers to timing of the pitch
peak and falls across segments. Overall, five of the seven proposed pitch
accents in Spanish (Hualde & Prieto, 2015) were found in pitch accents of
the verbs in the L2 data of this study. These raw frequencies and percentages for declaratives versus imperatives are presented in Tables 2 and 3.
If we first compare the two conditions on the pretest, we can see that
more than 50% of the verb pitch accents used by participants was L* for
declaratives, whereas for imperatives there was a slight preference for
Table 2. Relative frequency distribution of tonal alignment of the
verb for FOG
Pragmatic
intention
Declaratives
(pretest)
Declaratives
(posttest)
Imperatives
(pretest)
Imperatives
(posttest)

L*

L+H*

H+L*

L* +H

L+>H*

Total N

40 (51.9%) 19 (24.7%) 3 (3.9%) 0

15 (19.5%)

77

44 (47.8%) 20 (21.7%) 5 (5.4%) 0

23 (25.0%)

92

29 (38.7%) 24 (32.0%) 5 (6.7%) 2 (2.7%) 15 (20.0%)

75

40 (44.9%) 22 (24.7%) 3 (3.4%) 1 (1.1%) 23 (25.8%)

89

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21

TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

Table 3. Relative frequency distribution of tonal alignment of the
verb for FOG + I
Pragmatic
intention
Declaratives
(pretest)
Declaratives
(posttest)
Imperatives
(pretest)
Imperatives
(posttest)

L*

L+H*

H+L*

L* +H

L+>H*

Total N

49 (51.6%) 18 (18.9%) 13 (13.7%) 3 (3.2%) 12 (12.6%)

95

31 (35.6%) 15 (17.2%) 22 (25.3%) 1 (1.1%) 18 (20.7%)

87

36 (43.4%) 23 (27.7%)

18 (21.7%)

83

13 (14.8%) 34 (38.6%) 10 (11.4%) 1 (1.1%) 30 (34.1%)

88

6 (7.2%)

0

L* in both conditions (38.7% in FOG and 43.4% for FOG + I). This pattern
is quite different from the instructor who did not use L* for the verb’s
pitch accent in imperative and declarative utterances, but rather L* +H
(33.3%) and L+>H* (66.7%) in both pragmatic contexts. However, this is
not to say that the learners did not produce rising pitch accents in
the pretest, as almost half of the imperative utterances did show a
rising pitch accent that either reached its peak in the stressed syllable
(i.e., L+H*; 32.0% for FOG and 27.7% for FOG + I) or in a posttonic syllable
(i.e., L+>H*; 20.0% for FOG and 21.7% for FOG + I).
With respect to possible changes after the task-based intervention,
there are minimal differences between the pre- and posttest distributions
of the verb pitch accents in the FOG condition; the only exception is that,
in the posttest, the majority of pitch accents in both pragmatic contexts
have a rise in pitch that either reaches its peak in or after the stressed
syllable. However, if we compare the FOG + I pre- and posttest results, we
can see that the overall rate of rising pitch accents that begin in the verb’s
stressed syllable increases from 49.4% (L+H* = 27.7%; L+>H* = 21.7%,
L* +H = 0%) to 73.8% (L+H* = 38.6%; L+>H* = 34.1%, L* +H = 1.1%) in the
imperative context. This result is more targetlike in the sense that there
is a rise instead of a low plateau; however, the instructor never employed
the L+H* pitch accent in the imperative target utterances. Furthermore,
there also appears to be a difference in the declarative verb pitch accent
in the FOG + I condition, with an increase of H+L* between the pretest
(13.7% of total) and posttest (25.3% of total), indicating more variability
in the interlanguage system after the task-based intervention.
NUCLEAR CONFIGURATIONS
In addition to the verb pitch accent, the nuclear configuration of the
686 target L2 utterances were categorized according to the Spanish
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Sean McKinnon

Table 4. Relative frequency distribution of the final pitch accent of
the noun for FOG
Pragmatic intention
Declaratives (pretest)
Declaratives (posttest)
Imperatives (pretest)
Imperatives (posttest)

Falling tone

Rising tone

Low tone

Total N

5 (6.5%)
0
5 (6.7%)
5 (5.6%)

9 (11.7%)
26 (28.3%)
12 (16.0%)
27 (30.3%)

63 (81.8%)
66 (71.7%)
58 (77.3%)
57 (64.0%)

77
92
75
89

ToBI system. Upon surveying the data, it was evident that there was a
large amount of variation (i.e., 14 possible nuclear configurations were
identified) compared to the instructor’s categorical use of L* L% for
declaratives and H+L* L% for imperative sentences. For example, in
addition to the more targetlike L% boundary tone, there were also utterances that displayed a high rising terminal (H%) for these nonquestion
utterances, a phenomenon that has been found in American English
(Warren, 2016). To better organize the data, all variants were collapsed
according to the meaningful distinction made by the instructor—that is,
the final pitch accent of the utterance. Therefore, the pitch accents
L+H*, L* +H, and L+>H* were grouped together as rising tones; L* was
categorized as a low tone; and H+L* was categorized as a falling tone.
The raw frequencies and percentages for pitch movement of the final
pitch accent are presented in Tables 4 and 5.
As can be seen from the pretest patterns for both conditions, there do
not appear to be differences in the final pitch movement. Furthermore,
neither condition appears to differentiate imperatives from declaratives
based on this movement, as there was a strong preference to use a low
tone regardless of the intended pragmatic meaning. Additionally, it is
important to note that the final falling tones for both groups occur at
very low frequencies in the pretest. Both groups of learners in the
pretest were nonnative like in their realization of the imperative’s nuclear
configuration compared to the native speaker instructor.
With regard to the posttest, the FOG + I condition demonstrated an
increase in the frequency of falling tones with imperative utterances,
Table 5. Relative frequency distribution of the final pitch accent of
the noun for FOG + I
Pragmatic intention

Falling tone

Rising tone

Low tone

Total N

Declaratives (pretest)
Declaratives (posttest)
Imperatives (pretest)
Imperatives (posttest)

5 (5.3%)
8 (9.2%)
5 (6.0%)
21 (23.9%)

13 (13.7%)
8 (9.2%)
17 (20.5%)
18 (20.5%)

77 (81.1%)
71 (81.6%)
61 (73.5%)
49 (55.7%)

95
87
83
88

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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

23

from 6.0% in the pretest to 23.9% in the posttest, which indicates a move
toward targetlike productions. Although there was still a preference for
low tones with imperatives in the posttest, the increase of falling tones
does demonstrate that, as a group, the FOG + I condition slightly modified their final pitch accent. Crucially, there was not a large increase in
falling tones in declarative utterances between the pre- and posttest in
the FOG + I condition nor did the FOG condition increase the use of a
final falling tone in imperatives or declaratives after the task-based
intervention. However, it is curious to note the FOG condition increased
their use of a final rising tone in both imperative and declarative sentences
between the pre- and posttests, indicating that there may be more variability in their interlanguage system.
Finally, Figures 8, 9, and 10 illustrate these changes in the pitch contour for the FOG + I condition. Figures 8 and 9 are representative of
the differences observed between imperatives and declaratives in the
FOG + I condition on the posttest. Although the nuclear configuration
for the imperative utterance in Figure 9 is nontargetlike—in comparison
to the instructor’s input—Figure 10 exemplifies a more targetlike production of the imperative (i.e., presence of a final fall) on the posttest of
a FOG + I condition.
DISCUSSION
The current study investigated the possibility of employing a focused,
task-based intervention centered on how intonation can be used to distinguish two morphologically identical forms in Spanish: imperatives

Figure 8. Waveform and pitch contour from a FOG + I participant’s posttest declarative utterance nivela el muro “s/he is straightening the wall.”
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24

Sean McKinnon

Figure 9. Waveform and pitch contour from a FOG + I participant’s
posttest imperative utterance nivela el muro “straighten-IMP the wall.”
and declaratives. Through a pretest-posttest design, which was mediated
by one of two focus-on-form conditions, this study sought to explore:
(a) whether focus on grammatical + intonational form during a taskbased intervention leads to increased improvement on producing this
pragmatic distinction through intonation as compared to a focus on
grammatical form condition; and (b) whether L2 learners use the same
phonetic cues as those provided in the input by a native speaker instructor
to distinguish between declarative and imperative utterances.

Figure 10. Waveform and pitch contour from a FOG + I participant’s
posttest imperative utterance nivela el muro “straighten-IMP the wall.”
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

25

With respect to the first research question, this study has provided
evidence that explicit focus-on-form of the pragmatic functions of intonation in a task-based lesson led L2 Spanish learners in the FOG + I
condition to modify their output in the posttest. Specifically, with the
imperative utterances between the pre- and posttests, as a whole this
group increased the verb’s pitch range (nontargetlike based on the
instructor’s input), lowered the pitch range of the noun (nontargetlike),
increased the percentage of rising verb pitch accents (targetlike), and
increased the frequency of falling tones in the nuclear configuration
(targetlike). Furthermore, the modifications of the verb and noun’s
pitch range showed statistically significant differences between imperative and declarative sentences in the posttest, whereas, in the pretest,
this was not the case. Moreover, in the FOG condition no effects were
observed between the pre- and posttest results or between imperative
and declaratives during the posttest. It is important to note that both
groups received similar input from the instructor, in that the intonation
cues she uses (i.e., the nuclear configuration) to distinguish imperatives (i.e., H+L* L%) from declarative (i.e., L* L%) were available to both
conditions during the task-based intervention.
Given these striking differences between the two conditions, it is proposed that the output modification in the FOG + I condition is attributable
to the type of instruction these learners received from the instructor.
In this condition, during the pretask phase, the instructor engaged the
learners in a conscious awareness-raising exercise by explicitly instructing them to notice how Spanish declaratives and imperatives can be
distinguished through the use of intonation. Additionally, when learners
did not modify their imperative intonation during the public performance in the posttask, the instructor provided them with metalinguistic
feedback on how they needed to change their intonation when using the
imperative. Furthermore, because it was a public performance, this explicit
feedback was heard by all the participants, which may have benefited the
whole group. It is possible that the learners in the FOG + I condition may
have noticed a gap between their interlanguage and the TL as the result of
the type of instruction, and that the input available became intake, which
may have led to the modified output on the posttest. Indeed, the present
study seems to be in line with previous L2 prosody research, which has
shown that increased awareness can lead to TL gains (Hardison, 2004;
Pennington & Ellis, 2000; Ramírez Verdugo, 2006). However, what is unique
about the present study is that it has demonstrated that the pre- and posttask opportunities to focus-on-form, which are normally described in the
TBLT literature as a focus on grammatical form (Ellis, 2003), can be
expanded to include intonational form as well.
Another key feature of this study is the demonstration of how intonation can be the focus of a TBLT lesson without sacrificing the essential
components of a task (Ellis, 2009); this is important given that previous
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Sean McKinnon

L2 prosodic research has emphasized teaching intonation in meaningful
contexts (Jenkins, 2004; Levis & Pickering, 2004). This finding may help
lay the foundation for other TBLT researchers and practitioners to begin
to incorporate a task-based focus on intonation into the L2 classroom,
providing the opportunity for learners to stretch their interlanguage
development in an area that does not as frequently receive attention in
the literature, or in the classroom, compared to segmental phonology
and grammatical forms.
Despite the observed differences in the posttest of the FOG + I condition, the results clearly show that the modified output is more variable
and slightly different than the input provided by the instructor (i.e., greater
pitch range in the noun and the categorical use of H+L* L% for imperative utterances). The results of the present study have shown that the
FOG + I learner productions are different from those of the instructor
in the following ways: (a) learners increased the verb pitch range in
the posttest with imperatives—a nonsignificant difference for the
instructor; (b) learners decreased the noun’s pitch range with declaratives to distinguish it from imperatives—instead of increasing the noun’s
pitch range with imperatives to create more productions of the falling
tone H+L* in the nuclear configuration; and (c) learners utilized a plethora
of different nuclear configurations, both in the final pitch accent and the
boundary tone, which made it necessary to just focus on the final pitch
accent—the instructor categorically used L* L% for declaratives and
H+L* L% for imperatives. This finding concurs with other L2 prosody
studies that have demonstrated that learners may employ different prosodic cues in production from native speakers to still make a meaningful
distinction in the L2 (Aoyama & Guion, 2007; Swerts & Zerbian, 2010).
Having their attention drawn to how intonation can be used to make
a TL pragmatic distinction may have increased the amount of variability
in the interlanguage system of the FOG + I condition learners (e.g., the
large 95% CI error bars in the noun’s pitch range in Figure 7); increasing
variability when new variable forms are added to the interlanguage
is a consistent trend found in the general SLA literature, in addition
to L2 prosodic research (Henriksen et al., 2010). This interpretation is
strengthened by the fact that the learners in the FOG condition did not
make any significant modifications in their output on the posttest. One
possibility for this result may have to do with the fact that nothing
new was added to the interlanguage system for the learners, who had
already learned how to morphologically form the imperative.6
Although it cannot be known for sure why the learners modified the
pitch ranges, it is possible that they misinterpreted some of the cues
in the signal. For example, for the instructor to have a large final falling
tone that could result in a significant difference between imperatives
and declaratives, there needed to have been a high peak, which would
have been the result of L* +H or L+>H* pitch accent in the verb. This high
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

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peak may have been noticed by the FOG + I learners and interpreted as
meaning that they needed to reach this peak in the verb’s pitch accent.
Furthermore, to approximate the final fall of the imperative sentences,
the learners may have resorted to decreasing the noun’s tonal range to
create a difference between the two pragmatic contexts. However, these
possible explanations are currently just speculation as no measures of L2
perception of the TL prosody or of noticing were implemented in this
study, something that should be included in future research.
With its emphasis on teaching language through real-world tasks and
the potential to incorporate focus-on-form, this study has shown how
TBLT can help promote the L2 acquisition of the prosody/pragmatics
interface. Specifically, these two aspects of TBLT— contextualized
language use and the possibility to increase awareness of form—have
also been proposed as facilitators in the acquisition of L2 prosody
(Hardison, 2004; Jenkins, 2004; Levis & Pickering, 2004; Pennington &
Ellis, 2000; Ramírez Verdugo, 2006). However, despite some modifications moving in a more targetlike direction, this study has also shown
that learners’ interlanguage intonation is still variable, and they can
employ other resources to make meaningful TL contrasts that are
not present in the native speaker instructor’s speech.
CONCLUSION
One of the most significant questions that remains from the present
study is whether or not these changes in the imperative prosody in the
FOG + I condition are long lasting. This is unfortunately beyond the
scope of this study, which first wanted to assess if prosody was even
teachable within a TBLT framework; future research should certainly
incorporate a delayed posttest into the empirical design. Future research
should also include a direct measure of L2 noticing of prosody in order to
strengthen claims made about the effectiveness of instruction. Additionally, in order to investigate whether these L1 English learners of Spanish
transferred their L1 intonation patterns when made aware of a L2 pragmatic
distinction through intonation more work needs to be done on correlating
English intonation with pragmatic functions. Previous research has shown
that L2 learners transfer their L1 prosodic patterns to the TL (Gabriel &
Kireva, 2014; Maastricht et al., 2016; Mennen, 2004; Swerts & Zerbian, 2010),
so in order to investigate this possibility a direct comparison between the
learners’ L1 and L2 productions should be made. Moreover, the role of
language proficiency should also be investigated as it has been shown
that it can promote the acquisition of L2 prosody (Henriksen et al., 2010;
Maastricht et al., 2016; Swerts & Zerbian, 2010; Trofimovich & Baker, 2006).
To provide credence to the necessity of teaching the prosody/
pragmatic interface, future research should also examine native speakers’
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28

Sean McKinnon

perception of L2 intonation, given that this may cause misunderstandings to arise between learners and native speakers (Ramírez Verdugo,
2005; Ramírez Verdugo & Romero Trillo, 2005). If native speakers are
unable to accurately interpret the intended pragmatic meaning of L2
learners, this could lead to negative consequences for the learner in
situations in which it is essential that they make their intentions known.
The methodology present in this study could be adaptable to other minimal prosodic pairs, such as distinguishing between different types of
questions in Spanish (e.g., confirmation yes-no vs. counterexpectational
yes-no questions; Prieto & Roseano, 2010). Finally, it would be beneficial
to capture the in-the-moment input from instructors and in-the-moment
output from learners in future studies on TBLT and L2 intonation, as
these productions may reflect the instructors’ and learners’ actual pragmatic use of intonation more so than the explicit and formal knowledge
obtained in this study. However, using more spontaneous data creates a
dilemma because more naturalistic data, with its large quantity of nonsonorant segments, will make it harder for computer software programs
to track the pitch contour. However, these potential challenges offer the
field new opportunities as this line of investigation is wide open given that,
to the author’s knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to see if intonation is teachable through the use of a focused, task-based intervention.
Despite these limitations, the present study has the potential to open
a new and exciting line of research in the fields of TBLT and SLA by
initiating and promoting dialogue on the instruction of L2 intonation
and pragmatics in a TBLT setting. The evidence gathered from this
study has demonstrated that it is possible to expand the traditional
morphological focus-on-form to intonation in a TBLT setting, and that
learners can benefit from it. These results have important pedagogical
implications in that they show that it is possible to use a focused, taskbased intervention to raise awareness of how intonation can be used to
express specific pragmatic functions in the TL, with focus-on-form present during the pre- and posttask phases. Future research in this area is
needed to corroborate the present study’s findings before specific recommendations can be made for implementing task-based intonation
instruction into classrooms. To this end, it is of great importance for
researchers in the field to begin to fill this knowledge gap and expand
our understanding of how other L2 phonological aspects of L2 acquisition are mediated and affected in a TBLT setting.
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
The supplementary material provides the target sentences, a sample
oral DCT, a detailed lesson plan of the tasked-based intervention, and
sample materials for the focused, tasked-based intervention.
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TBLT, tonal alignment, and pitch range in L2 Spanish

29

To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://
dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0272263116000267.
Received 25 February 2016
Accepted 4 May 2016
Final Version Received 7 June 2016
NOTES
1. Disfluent speech does not provide a continuous pitch contour, and creaky voice
disrupts the pitch tracker in computer programs to the extent that pitch patterns and
values could not be reliably identified and categorized.
2. While the purpose of the task-based intervention for the FOG + I condition was to
raise their awareness on the intonational form of imperatives and declaratives, distractor
items were included in the oral DCT in order to not explicitly draw additional focus to the
contrast beyond the intervention.
3. Only the instructor directly interacted with the students in the task-based
intervention, while the researcher quietly stayed in the corner except for the recipe
demonstrations.
4. While the verb range for the instructor was normal, with skewness of 0.01
(SE = 0.54) and kurtosis of −0.86 (SE = 1.04), the noun range was not, with skewness of
0.42 (SE = 0.39) and kurtosis of −1.60 (SE = 1.04). The verb range for the L2 data was
not normal, with skewness of 1.84 (SE = 0.93) and kurtosis of 5.21 (SE = 0.19), and
neither was their noun range, with skewness of 2.95 (SE = 0.09) and kurtosis of 16.12
(SE = 0.19).
5. A Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test was possible for the instructor’s data because there
were no missing values. However, for the L2 data it was not always possible to compare
a learner’s imperative utterance to its declarative counterpart, or vice versa, due to
excluded data.
6. As noted by an anonymous reviewer, it may also have been possible that the FOG
group did not have enough resources or attention to notice intonation in addition to
grammar. An explicit measure of noticing should be included in future research to address
this possibility.
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