Pitch range variations in L2 Italian learners’ and native speakers' apologies

The study aims to explore the relationship between pitch variations and expression of apologies made by native and non-native speakers of Italian. 10 learners of Italian as L2 from Spain and 10 female native speakers of Italian fron Calabria were engaged in four role-play activities. Each role-play was supposed to trigger an apology, but context and social distance between the interlocutors were variable. An acoustic anlysis of participants' apologies was carried out, considering foundamental frequency (f0) and pitch range variations. The results showed that native speakers of Italian varied their pitch depending on the situation and the social distance between the interlocutors. By contrast, the L2 learners did not vary their pitch depending on the context. Furthermnore, in formal situations their pitch range was less wide than the native speakers'. We thus can infer that the L2 learnern, unlike the native speakers, might not yet have gained the ability yo modulate the L2 prosody to vary the "intensity" of their apologies in accordance with contextual variables"y