I don't think so.

Hi Andrew,

It seems like you have published most of the recent data on this topic.

Below, the statistical data is not very hard (although the sample size is reasonable) - and also, this focuses more on L2 intonation being influenced by the melody of song/music - but this might be somewhat along the lines of what you're looking for (I do have it, if you'd like a copy):

Fomina, A. (2000). Song melody influence on speech intonation memorization. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition. Woods, C., Luck, G.B., Brochard, R. O’Neill, S.A., Sloboda, J.A. [CD-ROM]

Dear Andrew,

Please consider the article:

Li, P., Baills, F., Baqué, L., & Prieto, P. (2023). The effectiveness of embodied prosodic training in L2 accentedness and vowel accuracy. Second Language Research, 39(4), 1077-1105. https://doi.org/10.1177/02676583221124075

We do not directly test the verbotonal method but just one of its techniques and find improvements thanks to prosodic training with gestures on the pronunciation of three vowels.

Florence Baills Thank you so much. That will be very useful.

Cheers

Andrew

Hello everyone. I think the verb-tonal idea of 'intonation first' should be seen as a vindication of the role of suprasegmentals rather than a dogma. What is important - in my opinion - is not so much how to measure this idea statistically, but the importance of this idea within the teaching of pronunciation in general. Intonation, rhythm, or even the non-verbal component, should be an essential part of pronunciation teaching and this opens up a useful and interesting approach in this field.

Great answer. No one would/should disagree with you though current common practice still tends to prioritize segmental study over suprasegmental study. When I say it is part of the dogma of verbotonalism I mean that it is actually one of the fundamental principles of the theory which seems to have worked in specific cases in the past. And people keep repeating this as though it were an ultimate truth and wholly-established. Of course, theoretically and even/especially from the perspective of acoustic phonetics, this makes perfect sense. Regrettably, though, in modern times, I cannot find hard data-driven evidence as to the impact of intonation training on the development of the pronunciation system as a whole. Perhaps this is due in part to the disappearance of some of the basic sources of information from the past such as the Revue de Phonétique Appliquée and the lack of evidence in some of the major languages, particularly English. Most writing has been in Serbo-Croat, French and Spanish with a restating of the theory from the American perspective with the work of Carl W. Asp. There are many studies still left to be done in relation to verbotonal theory and that would open up new avenues not only in pronunciation studies but in relation to the the interface between perception and learning - which is an under-researched area in education generally and language education in particular.

Karen Ludke Hello. Sorry, for some reason I did not see you reply until now. My apologies.

Yes I would very much like to have a copy of the article you mention. Thank you so much. We are actually conducting a study in Vietnam right now that looks specifically at the connection between intonation and individual sounds. The relationship does seem to be there.

Hello Andrew Lian - no worries about the delay and I hope that this article will be helpful for your research. It is not investigating the same questions that you have, but it is along similar lines.

Karen Ludke Thank you so much!