Polar Questions Beyond “Listen and Repeat”: Integrating Intonational Phonology into the L2 Russian Classroom

The acquisition of prosody is commonly regarded as a core objective in L2 curricula. Despite an extensive tradition of intonational studies in L1 Russian and a rich methodological literature on L2 Russian instruction, empirical studies examining L2 Russian intonation remain scarce. In this chapter, a corpus of Russian yes/no questions produced by 39 adult Italian learners is investigated. Polar questions were selected due to their robust prosodic marking in Standard Moscow Russian and their communicative importance, as Russian typically lacks grammatical marking for yes/no interrogatives. In contrast, Italian regional varieties exhibit considerable inter- and intra-speaker variability in polar question intonation, providing a valuable basis for cross-linguistic comparison. Data were elicited through a gamified, semi-spontaneous pair task. Analysis of L1 and L2 productions reveals several patterns of cross-linguistic influence, including transfer of dominant L1 tunes, selective transfer of non-dominant tunes, and some phenomena that cannot be directly explained by transfer. While learners show considerable variability at the phonological level, suggesting openness to prosodic experimentation, phonetic realization is more consistently shaped by L1 influence, particularly in pitch alignment, scaling, and tune–text coordination. The chapter concludes by proposing the pedagogical use of such tasks, combined with visual acoustic feedback, to enhance learners’ awareness of suprasegmental differences and move beyond imitation-based instruction.