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

This study investigates differences in pitch range—the interval between highest and lowest pitch—in English produced by native Jordanian Arabic speakers (L2 English) compared to native English speakers (L1 English) and native Arabic speakers (L1 Arabic). Using recordings of 12 Jordanian participants reading the same text in both languages and comparing them with 12 native British English speakers from the IViE Corpus, the study found that L2 English exhibits a significantly narrower pitch span than L1 English. Notably, the pitch ranges of L1 Arabic and L2 English were strikingly similar, suggesting a negative cross-linguistic transfer (interference) from Arabic to English rather than an independent interlanguage pattern. These findings support Mennen's L2 Intonation Learning Theory's "realisational dimension" and contribute to understanding how native language prosody influences second language intonation acquisition.