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Title:
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Prosodic Transfer: The tonal constraints on Vietnamese acquisition of English stress and rhythm
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Author:
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Thu Nguyen
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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The University of Queensland
, Linguistics Program
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Degree Date:
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2004
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Language Acquisition
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Subject Language(s):
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Vietnamese
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Director(s):
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John Ingram
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Abstract:
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This dissertation investigated the constraints of tonal features on Vietnamese production and perception of English stress and rhythm. In order to pursue the aims of this study, seven main experiments were carried out to examine five prosodic phenomena: (1) Prosodic cues for Compound-Phrasal contrasts in Vietnamese vs. English, (2) Vietnamese production and perception of three English stress patterns, (3) tonal constraints on the perception of English stress, (4) Vietnamese production of lexically stressed vs. unstressed contrasts, and (5) Vietnamese production of English stress timing.
The results of this study showed that:
(1) Native and non-native speakers used different strategies, optimally suited to their respective first language phonologies for identifying English stress contrasts. Native speakers of English employed a combination of four acoustic parameters: pitch, intensity, duration and vowel quality in realization of stress contrasts. By contrast, Vietnamese learners showed tonal transfer effects in their realization of the English stress contrasts in their reliance mainly on pitch and intensity and insensitivity to duration cues.
(2) Vietnamese learners make perceptual reference to the phonetic categories of their L1 tonal system in the perception of English stress. The perceptual tonal transfer was found to be constrained by pitch levels and the segmental composition of the syllables.
(3) Vietnamese learners transferred the syllable-timing feature into their English rhythmic production, indicated by the lack of compression of stressed syllable in polysyllabic words or stressed feet, lack of reduction of weak syllables, and the inappropriate pausing patterns at word boundaries.
In general, the results of this study showed that Vietnamese learners transfer L1 prosodic properties into their L2 English at both perception and production levels, especially at the initial stage of language acquisition. Learners make reference to and use the same acoustic features that are active in both languages (e.g., pitch, intensity) to perceive and encode on their L2 speech. By contrast, the acoustic parameters that are inactive in L1 (e.g., duration, vowel quality) fail to be recognized and realized in L2 speech. Nevertheless, the advanced speakers’ ability to make use of timing parameters to a better extent than beginners in both perception and production (e.g., to compress the compound words and stressed syllables in polysyllabic words, to reduce unstressed vowels), indicates that these can be improved by speakers’ experience in the
language. This suggests that at the initial stage of L2 sound acquisition learners automatically develop a perceptual bias that reflects the relative frequencies of the various acoustic cues in their L1; i.e., cue reliance depends on cue reliability (Boersma, 1997, Boersma and Hayes, 2000) and that the improvement in the perception and production of L2 acoustic cues reflects the availability of these cues in the target language. In other words, with more exposure to the L2 language environment, learners are gradually receptive to the L2 acoustic cues and able to realize them in their production.
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Page Updated: 26-Nov-2009
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