Acquisition of Second Language Intonation

Frequently advanced speakers of a secondlanguage use the foreign grammar perfectly -often knowing the rules better than nativespeakers. And yet by listening to their talkingnative speakers know immediately that they arecommunicating with foreigners.The problem lies in the area of prosody. Inclassroom situations students might learn howto role an 'r' or form a proper 'th' but not how toproduce entire intonation phrases. Howeveronly with intonation is the full meaning that aspeaker wants to communicate understood.But why is intonation assumed to be of specialdifficulty to L2 learners? Why are certainfeatures more difficult to learn than others?This investigation sheds some light on thedirection of acquisition of intonation by L2learners (here: L2 Spanish by L1 speakers ofGerman) and simultaneously makes predictionsabout the markedness of certain phenomena inthe languages under consideration.These findings may help language teachers andlearners as well-directed teaching materials canbe derived and major problems in theacquisition process can be resolved moreeasily.