The pitch range of L2 English read by native speakers of Jordanian Arabic compared with that of L1 speakers of English and Arabic

The pitch range of L2 English, produced by native speakers of Jordanian Arabic learning English, compared to that of L1 English and L1 Arabic has not yet been explored. This study investigates whether there is a difference in pitch range between L1 English and L1 Arabic and between L1 Arabic and L2 English. Twelve Jordanian participants were recorded reading the same text in L2 English and L1 Arabic (a translated version of the English text). Their recordings were compared with the recordings of 12 British speakers from the IViE Corpus (L1 English), reading the same text. Each text was split into five sections, and pitch range measurements were taken from those smaller parts of the whole passage. Our findings were that (a) there is a significantly reduced pitch range (narrower pitch span) for L2 English than for L1 English and (b) the pitch ranges of L1 Arabic and L2 English are strikingly similar. While (a) is consistent with the claim that the pitch span for L2 English is universally narrower than that for L1 English, (b) suggests that the narrower pitch span for L2 here is rather a negative cross-linguistic transfer (interference), not interlanguage, between the two languages. The findings contribute to our understanding of the cross-linguistic prosodic effect of L1 and to Mennen's L2 Intonation Learning Theory.