Facets of pitch sensitivity in L2 prosody acquisition: Roles of domain-general and speech-specific individual differences

Speech perception is thought to draw on multiple abilities, including both domain-general (perceptual, cognitive, motoric) and speech-specific (categorization) processes, yet it remains unclear how individual learners differ across these dimensions and how such differences shape language learning outcomes. This study examined 123 Chinese learners of English to investigate different facets of pitch sensitivity and their impact on acquiring L2 English lexical stress. Participants completed a battery of domain-general, non-speech tasks assessing perceptual, cognitive, and motoric processing of pitch and non-pitch information, along with a speech-specific cue-weighting task. Results revealed substantial individual variation in pitch discrimination and reproduction, as well as attention to pitch, which accounted for a medium-to-large proportion of variance in lexical stress identification, even after controlling for experience-related factors and general L2 proficiency. The findings indicate that successful L2 suprasegmental learning depends not only on precise acoustic encoding but also on the motoric integration of existing cues (e.g., pitch for tonal-language speakers) at domain-general, pre-categorical levels rather than at speech-specific levels.