Prosody transfer in second language acquisition: Mandarin Chinese tonal alignment in English pitch accent.

Abstract

Tonal alignment patterns of Mandarin Chinese (L1) in production of English pitch accent are investigated in this study. Previous studies have observed that the F0 of lexical tone in Mandarin is closely aligned with the carrier syllable. This study examines whether this stability in the lexical tonal alignment is transferred to L2 prosody production, such as pitch accent in English. The F0 contours of native speakers of Chinese were analyzed for the English listing contour (L*+H) and a sequence of lexical tones (low‐rise) at varying speech rates. Regardless of the distinct prosodic structures between Chinese lexical tone and English pitch accent, our results indicate that the native tonal alignment pattern can influence L2 production, in which the listing contours produced by Chinese speakers are systematically associated with syllable edges. This tonal alignment pattern was consistent across variable speech rates; each tonal target was associated with a syllable edge. On the other hand, the tonal alignment in the English speakers’ listing contour was not as stable as the Chinese pattern. The results suggest that Chinese speakers seem to reinterpret the pitch accent (L*+H) similar to lexical tone sequences (e.g., L‐R), and transfer their native pattern to the production of L2 prosody.