Suprasegmental features of speech have received well-deserved attention in the past decades. In particular, research in the f0 domain has proven especially promising since the melodic and tonal attributes of speech are perceptually salient and robust. They also convey a variety of meanings – lexical, grammatical, affective, pragmatic, conative, social – and they facilitate cerebral speech processing and comprehension. Unprecedented mobility of human populations leads to multilingual contexts that create new situations of language contact and language learning involving typologically different language varieties, many of which are still under-researched. Exactly these new linguistic situations could provide new insights into functioning of melodic and tonal phenomena and their role in, for instance, the linguistic structure, language learning and social stereotyping.

Submissions that investigate tone and intonation in relation to the following subtopics are especially welcome:
• perception and interpretation of melodic and tonal features in non-native languages and non-standard varieties
• implicit (unconscious) judgements about the users of non-native languages and non-standard varieties
• explicit (conscious) evaluations of intonation of non-native languages and non-standard varieties in different contexts, e.g., court, L2 proficiency exams, job interviews, business presentations
• emotional response to non-standard varieties and foreign-accented speech
• social consequences of speaking outside standard
• effects of unfamiliar accents into f0 processing and cognitive load
• entrainment/conversational accommodation in f0 domain
• the role of intonation in perceived fluency, accentedness, intelligibility and comprehensibility
• didactic approach to tones and tunes in foreign language teaching

After the opening overview of the field, the special session is planned to host 6 oral presentations of 15 minutes plus 5 minutes for on-spot clarifications and a number of poster presentations. The presentations will be followed by a chaired panel discussion. Submissions to this special session of TAI use the same abstract and paper templates as regular contributions to TAI, and submissions are made through the same Easychair link as for regular contributions to TAI (see the TAI website, call for papers).