Abstract
English second language learners often experience difficulties in producing native-like English lexical stress. It is unknown which acoustic correlates, such as fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity, are the most problematic for Chinese dialect speakers. The present study investigated the prosodic transfer effects of first language (L1) regional dialects on the production of English stress contrasts. Native English speakers (N = 20) and Chinese learners (N = 60) with different dialect backgrounds (Beijing, Changsha, and Guangzhou dialects) produced the same stimulus including both trochaic and iambic patterns. Results showed that (a) all participants produced the stressed syllable with greater values of F0, duration, and intensity; (b) Native speakers of English employed an exquisite combination of F0, duration, and intensity, while the dialect groups transfer their native prosody into their production of English lexical stress, resulting in the deviation or abnormality of acoustic cues. Results suggest that L1 native dialect background is considered as a potentially influential factor which may transfer in L2 speech encoding and decoding process.
Highlights
IntroductionFirst language (L1) typological factors have been reported as determining, to a degree, the production and perception success rate for second language (L2) stress (Altmann, 2006)
Using absolute values (Figure 2) and stressed-to-unstressed vowel (S/U) ratios (Figure 3) of F0, duration, and intensity as indices, this study explores how American speakers and Chinese dialect speakers marked prosodic targets
Results suggest that speakers of these three Chinese dialects produced less native-like stress patterns, they used the three cues to distinguish stress
Summary
First language (L1) typological factors have been reported as determining, to a degree, the production and perception success rate for second language (L2) stress (Altmann, 2006). Trubetzkoy (1958) claimed that L2 perception is “filtered” by the L1 “sieve.” The effects of such filtering on production are most apparent when a L2 speaker is perceived as showing a foreign, or non-native, accent, which is largely detectable due to L1 transfer. Prior research has revealed that L2 learners of non-stress languages, such as Chinese, may not process stress as a native does (Wang, 2008; Zhang et al, 2008; Qin et al, 2017). L1 lexical tone sensitivity, for L1 language speakers, such as Cantonese, for L2 speakers, or even children, might contribute either directly or indirectly to L2 English lexical stress sensitivity (Choi et al, 2017). The “tendency to transfer is especially powerful in second language acquisition” (Major, 2001). Transfer can occur in several linguistic dimensions, including the lexical, syntactic, and phonological domains (Major, 2001)
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