Exploring the L1-L2 Relationship in the L2 Acquisition of Prosody*
Laurent Rasier1,2 & Philippe Hiligsmann2
Université catholique de Louvain1 & F.R.S – FNRS2
Abstract
This paper explores the L1-L2 relationship in the L2 acquisition of prosody. The first part of
the paper outlines a method to investigate transfer effects in L2 prosody. Then, we report on
an experiment in which we examined native and non-native speakers’ use of (de)accentuation
to prosodically signal information status in Dutch and French. With the aid of a picture
description task in which the information value of the discourse referents was varied
experimentally, we elicited both L1 and L2 data from 20 French-speaking learners of Dutch
and 20 Dutch-speaking learners of French. The main research question was whether there
would be any relationship between the typological distance between the learners’ L1 and L2
(defined in terms of the “markedness relationships” between the two languages) and the
occurrence of transfer in their use of (de)accentuation. The results reveal considerable
differences between native and non-native speakers on the one hand and between the two
groups of L2 learners on the other hand. More specifically, the results support the view that
markedness is an important factor in predicting and explaining learning difficulties as well as
the cases of prosodic transfer.
*
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRSF.N.R.S.). We also thank the participants in the L1-L2-conference (First and second languages: exploring the
relationship in pedagogy-related contexts, Oxford, 27-29 March 2009) as well as an anonymous reviewer for
their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
1.
Introduction
The relationship between the mother tongue (L1) and the second language (L2) has been the
object of numerous studies in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) research. Much
of the discussion has focussed on so-called transfer phenomena that are generally defined as
“the incorporation of features of the L1 into the knowledge system of the L2 which the learner
is trying to build” (Ellis 1994: 28). After a period in the 1950s-1960s when transfer was seen
as the main cause of learning difficulties and a period in the 1970s when it was denied any
place in the L2 acquisition process, we have now reached a point in the transfer debate where
most authors acknowledge that “despite its sometimes irritatingly elusive character, transfer is
one of the major factors shaping the learner’s interlanguage competence and performance”
(Kohn 1986: 21). Besides, it is also becoming increasingly clear that transfer phenomena need
not be restricted to the learners’ incorporation of L1 elements into their L2 production. As
suggested by Odlin (1989: 27), transfer can also result from “similarities and differences
between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps
imperfectly) acquired”. In other words, transfer is not limited to the influence of L1 on L2, but
can also involve the influence of L2 on L3. Moreover, there are well-documented examples in
the literature in which it is the learners’ L1 that gets influenced by some characteristics of
subsequently acquired languages. Taken together, these findings suggest that transfer should
no longer be seen as a unidirectional phenomenon (as was e.g. the case in Lado’s Contrastive
Analysis Hypothesis; Lado 1957) but as a multidirectional one (see e.g. Pavlenko & Jarvis
2002 on “bidirectional transfer” and Jarvis & Pavlenko 2008 on “forward transfer”, “reverse
transfer”, and “lateral transfer”).
Following Benson (2002: 68), it can be concluded from the above that “transfer does
occur, but is a far more complex phenomenon than hitherto believed”. In order to take this
complexity into account, transfer will be defined here in very general terms, as the cross-lin-
guistic influence, within an individual’s linguistic system, of one (or more) language(s) over
another (see also Gilquin 2008: 4-5)1. Despite intensive research efforts, many questions regarding the exact nature of transfer, the circumstances in which it occurs, and the
psychological processes it relies on are still, to a large extent, left unsolved. To give but one
example, instances of L1 influence on L2 performance are well-documented in the area of
phonology where a so-called “foreign accent” is probably the clearest manifestation of the
learner’s L1 in L2 speech. Yet, most research on the acquisition of phonological skills in an
L2 has hitherto concentrated on segmental issues, thereby disregarding suprasegmentals/prosody (e.g. intonation, stress, accent, rhythm; De Bot 1986, Leather & James 1991, Trouvain &
Gute 2007).
This paper investigates transfer effects in the L2 acquisition of prosody. It is organized
as follows. First, we review earlier methodological frameworks in transfer research. It is
argued that they actually left out an important aspect of transfer, i.e. its relation to typology
and more precisely the markedness relationships between the learners’ L1 and L2. Then, we
present an alternative approach in which typological constraints on transfer are taken into
account. The method we propose is illustrated by means of a study of prosodic transfer.
2.
Assessing (prosodic) transfer in SLA
The notion of transfer in SLA research is closely related to contrastive analysis (CA). After a
period of disregard, we see nowadays a clear resurgence of CA in SLA research which is
motivated by the view that “you cannot account for SLA just by describing L1, L2 and/or IL.
To account for SLA, you must move to second order application, and compare these” (James
1994: 180). Indeed, as Selinker (1989: 287) observes, “CA is the best place to begin language
transfer studies since structural congruence (or at least, partial structural similarity) is most
1
Grosjean (1998, 2008) suggests that a further distinction should be made between transfer and interference. In
his view, transfer is basically static as it reflects permanent traces of one language in the other (as in the case of a
foreign accent), whereas interference is dynamic as it refers to elements of another language that incidentally slip
into the output of the language being spoken/written (as in the case of occasional pronunciation errors).
probably necessary, though not sufficient, for most types of language transfer to occur”. Not
surprisingly, then, most contemporary approaches seek to combine CA with an in-depth study
of samples of learner language, i.e. interlanguage (IL) (see Rasier & Hiligsmann to appear for
a discussion of recent developments in CA in relationship with SLA research).
In this section, we outline our approach to transfer. The method shares a number of
features with contemporary approaches to transfer (e.g. James 1994, Granger 1996, Jarvis
2000, Gilquin 2008) for it also relies on a combination of contrastive analysis and contrastive
interlanguage analysis. However, there are also a number of differences as our model’s CA
component takes the typological distance between the learners’ L1 and L2 into account, and
its CIA section examines the L2 performance of learners with different target languages.
More specifically, we compare learners in a given learning situation (e.g. French-speaking
learners of Dutch) with learners in the reverse learning situation (e.g. Dutch-speaking learners
of French), and then relate the IL data to data from other categories of learners. To guarantee
the validity of the comparison, care must be taken that the learners all have comparable
profiles.
The first step in our approach consists in a contrastive analysis of comparable data in
the learners’ L1 and L2. To guarantee the comparability of the data, these data have to be
gathered in the same experimental conditions. Then, the L1 and L2 data are related to
comparable data for other typologically (un)related languages so that the typological distance
between the languages under investigation can be determined. This comparison results in a
contrastive-typological description of native speech that has both a predictive and explanatory
value for IL facts.
After contrastively analyzing native speech, we set out to describe the interlanguage
data. Using the data from the native speakers as a point of reference (i.e. control data), we first
describe the IL varieties under investigation to determine what the L2 learners are doing right
or wrong when using the L2. Then, the IL data are compared with each other as well as with
data from other IL varieties (provided these are available), leading to a “contrastivetypological description of IL”, or, in James’ terminology, “a quantificational contrastive
typology of a number of interlanguages” (James 1994: 187).
Finally, we relate the contrastive-typological descriptions of native and interlanguage
speech to each other in order to get insight into the various forms of transfer in the IL data
(e.g. positive/negative transfer, overuse/underrepresentation).
The following figure summarizes our integrated approach to CA, CIA, and typology.
Mother tongue
(L1)
Other natural
languages
Target language
(L2)
Contrastive-typological
description of NS
TRANSFER
Contrastive-typological
description of IL
Interlanguage 1
(IL1)
Other interlanguage
varieties
Interlanguage 2
(IL2)
Figure 1. Integrated approach to CA, CIA, and typology (Rasier & Hiligsmann 2007: 46)
3.
Case study: prosodic marking of information status in L2 Dutch and L2 French
This section presents a case study using our integrated approach to transfer. Although our
example deals with a phonological variable in L2 Dutch and L2 French, it is possible to apply
our approach to other languages, other types of transfer (e.g. from L2 to L3), and other phenomena (e.g. syntactic, pragmatic, etc). And while our example comes from spoken language,
the approach could also be used in a study of transfer in written language, provided the necessary material is available.
3.1.
Background and experimental setup
The prosodic phenomenon we investigate in this case study is (pitch) accent. Contrastive
research on prosody indicates that there are (quite) large differences between languages as far
as their patterns of utterance-level accentuation are concerned. This is especially true for
Germanic and Romance languages that, according to Vallduvi (1991), fall into two groups:
1. Plastic languages. These are languages where contextually important information always gets accented, whereas contextually less important or contextually known
information does not, e.g. English, Dutch, German.
2. Non-plastic languages. These are languages with a fixed accent distribution that does
not reflect the news value of the sentence elements, and in which one has to use syntactic cues instead in order to signal information status, e.g. French, Spanish, Italian.
We wanted to know if such typological contrasts have an influence on the L2 learners’ use of
(de)accentuation2 to signal information status. We investigated this issue in the L2 speech of
20 (Belgian) French-speaking learners of Dutch and 20 Dutch-speaking learners of French (10
from the Netherlands and 10 from Flanders). All of them were 2nd-year university students of
economics (age: 19-20) who had been studying the L2 in a formal setting for eight years.
Our material consists of noun phrases of the type “indefinite article + adjective +
noun” (Dutch data) and “indefinite article + noun + adjective” (French data). The data were
elicited with a picture description task in which the participants were asked to describe geometrical figures (a circle, a triangle, a star, a square) appearing on a computer screen in different colours (red, yellow, blue, green). All the participants took the test in their L1 and L2
so that we had comparable data in both varieties at our disposal. Using situational contrasts
Deaccentuation refers to the fact that “a word that we might expect to be accented fails to be accented in a
context where it has recently been used or where the entity to which it refers has recently been mentioned” (Ladd
1996: 175).
2
(see also Swerts et.al. 2002), the information value of the words was systematically varied, resulting in four conditions: New/New (NN), Given/Contrastive (GC), Contrastive/Given (CG),
Contrastive/Contrastive (CC). A property is defined as “new” when it has not yet been used in
the discourse. It is called “given” when it has already been mentioned in the preceding context. A property that differs from the immediately preceding utterance is called “contrastive”.
We used a perceptive approach in order to assess the presence/absence of accent on a
particular piece of information. The data were first transcribed by the two authors
independently. Then, the transcriptions were compared with each other. In cases of
disagreement, the data were discussed until agreement was reached. We did not cross-check
our transcriptions with the aid of acoustic measurements (see Demers 1994 who advocates
such a ‘mixed/combined’ approach) because the segmental material in the stimuli was
insufficiently controlled for in order to carry out reliable acoustic analyses on the data. All
noun phrases were used for a distributional analysis involving the different kinds of
comparisons discussed in section 2 (see figure 1).
3.2.
Step 1: contrastive L1-L2 analysis
The first step in our approach involves a comparison of data in the learners’ L1 and L2. It is
predicted that the L1 French data will be characterized by fixed accentuation and no deaccentuation of contextually given information, whereas the L1 Dutch data will display a close relationship between the presence/absence of accent on a discourse referent and its contextual
news value as well as a high rate of deaccentuation of contextually given information.
Figure 2 summarizes the results for the L1 Dutch and L1 French data. As expected,
there is a closer association between accentuation and news value in L1 Dutch (Cramer’s V =
0,878; X2 = 319,107; df = 1; p < 0,001) than in L1 French (Cramer’s V = 0,615; X2 =
204,185; df = 1; p < 0,001). This difference can be attributed to the different treatment of con-
textually given information in the two languages. As is apparent from figure 8, it is most of
the time un-/deaccented in L1 Dutch (= 89,45%), but much less so in L1 French (= 66,79%).
Accentuation
Language
Dutch
[-accent]
[+accent]
French
97.99%
100.0%
92.69%
89.45%
80.0%
Percent
66.79%
60.0%
40.0%
33.21%
20.0%
7.31%
10.55%
2.01%
0.0%
Given
Important
News value
Given
Important
News value
Figure 2. Relationship between news value and (de)accentuation in L1 Dutch and L1 French
When we examine the accent patterns that were produced by the native speakers of Dutch, we
see that the most frequent accent pattern in each experimental condition reflects the contextual
news value of the words (figure 3). The only exception can be found in the GC-condition
where a fairly high number of cases with a prenuclear accent on the contextually given piece
of information can be found as well. Interestingly, the reverse pattern (i.e. postnuclear accent
on the G-element) hardly ever occurs in the CG-condition.
NN
OC
Accentdistributie
5,00%
10,00%
een RODE driehoek
een rode DRIEHOEK
een RODE DRIEHOEK
EEN//RODE//DRIEHOEK
Pies s how percents
50,00%
45,00%
90,00%
CO
CC
2,56%
97,44%
5,00%
95,00%
Figure 3. Accent patterns in L1 Dutch in the four experimental contexts
Moving on to the L1 French data (fig. 4), it appears that the French native speakers produce
the same accent pattern in the four experimental contexts. Traditionally, French is described
as a language with a fixed noun phrase-final accent, but this pattern is largely underrepresented in our data where the dominant accent pattern in each condition involves a double accent
on the adjective and the noun, i.e. arc accentual (“bridge accent”) instead of accent final
(“final accent”). The data also contain a few instances of arc accentuel étendu (“extended
bridge accent”), i.e. a pattern in which the first accent is realized on the indefinite article and
the second one on the noun, as well instances of accent de focalisation (“narrow focus
accent”) on the contextually contrastive entity in the GC- and CG-conditions. It should be
emphasized, though, that such cases of deaccented G-element are less frequent in L1 French
than in L1 Dutch (GC-condition: 5% vs. 50%; CG-condition: 30% vs. 98%).
NN
OC
5,00%
10,00%
Accentdistributie
un cercle ROUGE
un CERCLE rouge
un CERCLE ROUGE
UN cercle ROUGE
UN//CERCLE//ROUGE
5,00%
30,00%
30,00%
Pies s how percents
60,00%
60,00%
CO
CC
6,67%
1,67% 1,67%
6,67%
3,33%
30,00%
66,67%
83,33%
Figure 4. Accent patterns in L1 French in the four experimental contexts
Taken together, our L1 data confirm the view that Dutch can be considered as a language with
plastic accentuation3, whereas French appears to have a (quasi) non-plastic accent system.
Indeed, contrary to the claims made in traditional treatments of French accentuation, deaccentuation does occur in French (thanks to the accent de focalisation, i.e. “narrow focus accent”),
be it to a lesser extent than in Dutch but to a higher degree than in Italian where Swerts et.al.
(2002) did not find any single instance of deaccented given information.
3.2.
Step 2: contrastive-typological description of native speech
The results of the contrastive L1-L2 analysis in the previous section suggest that structural
principles outweigh pragmatic information in French, while it is the opposite in Dutch. If we
compare Dutch and French with other languages, it appears that many languages have
structural constraints on accentuation, whereas pragmatic factors need not be at play. More
precisely, although accent placement is mainly governed structurally in non-plastic languages,
3
This by no means implies that Dutch does not have any syntactic strategy to express focus meaning. In fact,
there are quite a lot of cases in spoken cases where prosodic and syntactic means are used to foreground a contextually important piece of information (Rasier 2006).
many prosodic systems rely on both structural and pragmatic information in their accent
placement strategies, albeit in a different order of preference (Rasier 2008). But, as can be
seen in figure 5, there does not to be any language where structural constraints are totally
absent and thus where there is a perfect correlation between news value and (de)accentuation.
Structural rules
only
Structural &
pragmatic rules
Pragmatic &
structural rules
Pragmatic rules
only
Portuguese,
Italian, Spanish
French, Romanian
English, Dutch,
German
?
Figure 5. Typology of accent systems (Rasier 2008: 55)
The data in figure 5 give us an idea of the typological distance between the Dutch and French
accent system. If we combine them with e.g. Eckman’s Markedness Differential Hypothesis
(MDH; Eckman 1987), it is possible to formulate a number of testable predictions/hypotheses
about the L2 learners’ accentuation strategies.
Eckman’s MDH states that a structure A is more marked than B if the existence of A
in a language necessitates the existence of B but B does not need A to exist in a language. In
prosodic terms, this means that pragmatic accentuation rules are more marked than structural
ones. Eckman (1987) also predicts that the more marked a rule is, the more difficult it is to
learn. Pragmatic accentuation rules – and accent systems where such rules have a dominant
position – should therefore be more difficult for L2 learners to acquire than structural ones. In
other words, the Dutch accentuation principles are in Eckman’s terms more marked than the
French ones, and should therefore cause more learning difficulties.
As figure 6 shows, the same kind of reasoning can be applied to individual accent
patterns. In this respect, it is still assumed that accent patterns resulting from the application
of structural rules are less marked than accent distributions that are motivated pragmatically.
Unmarked
Structural
Dutch:
- rhythmic acc.
French:
- final accent
Marked
Struct.-prag.
Prag.-struct.
Dutch:
-/
French:
- bridge accent
Dutch:
- broad focus
French:
- extended
bridge accent
Pragmatic
French:
- focus accent
- deaccentuation
Dutch:
- narrow
focus
- deaccentuation
Figure 6. Typology of accent patterns in Dutch and French (Rasier 2008: 62)
As far as ease of learning is concerned, Eckman (1987) predicts that marked patterns (e.g.
deaccentuation) will be more difficult to learn than unmarked ones (e.g. final accent, bridge
accent). He also states that marked L2 patterns that are less marked than in L1 should not be
difficult. In such a case, Dutch-speaking learners of French should not find it hard to deaccent
contextually given pieces of information in French, whereas French-speaking learners of
Dutch should have much difficulty with that pattern. Finally, Eckman predicts that unmarked
patterns are more likely to be transferred to L2 than marked ones. So, for example, Frenchspeaking learners of Dutch should transfer the French final accent and bridge accent to their
Dutch interlanguage but not the narrow focus accent (accent de focalisation) of their L1.
3.3.
Step 3: contrastive interlanguage analysis
The third step in our approach consists in testing the hypotheses that were formulated on the
basis of the contrastive-typological description of native speech against the IL facts. As
pointed out earlier, we first compare the IL data with the corresponding control data in order
to detect non-native features in L2 performance.
3.3.1. L2 Dutch vs. L1 Dutch
Comparing the accentuation strategies of French-speaking learners of Dutch with the strategies of native speakers, it appears first of all that there is a lower association between news
value and accentuation in L2 Dutch than in L1 Dutch (Cramer’s V = 0,600; X2 = 151,302; df
= 1; p < 0,001 in L2 Dutch vs. Cramer’s V = 0,878 in L1 Dutch). As can be seen in figure 7,
the main difference between the two groups of speakers has to do with their treatment of contextually given information. Most of the time, it gets deaccented in native speech but it is less
often the case in the L2 performance of the French-speaking learners of Dutch.
Accentuation
Language background
L2 Dutch
L1 Dutch
98.50%
97.99%
100.0%
[-accent]
[+accent]
89.45%
80.0%
Percent
56.82%
60.0%
43.18%
40.0%
20.0%
10.55%
2.01%
1.50%
0.0%
Given
Important
News value
Given
Important
News value
Figure 7. Relationship between news value and (de)accentuation in L1 and L2 Dutch
The difference between the native and non-native speakers of Dutch is even more striking
when we look at the results for the GC- and CG-conditions in figure 8, i.e. the two experimental contexts where deaccentuation could occur. In comparison with L1 Dutch, the distributions in which the G-element has no accent are clearly underrepresented in the L2 data,
which points to the relative difficulty of deaccenting contextually given information for the
French-speaking learners of Dutch. Indeed, the G-element is deaccented in only 5% of the
cases (vs. 50% in L1 Dutch; X2 = 16,184; df = 1; p < 0,001) in the GC-condition, whereas it is
deaccented in 35% of the cases (vs. 95% in L1 Dutch; X2 = 28,057; df = 1; p < 0,001) in the
CG-condition. Interestingly, deaccentuation is a marked accentuation rule, which according to
Eckman (1987) explains why it causes so much difficulty. Another interesting characteristic
of the French-speaking learners’ L2 speech is the fact that they produce the same default
pattern in all experimental conditions. This pattern involves the accentuation of the adjective
and the noun, and is reminiscent of the French “bridge accent”, i.e. an unmarked pattern.
NN
GC
Accent patterns
10,00%
30,00%
5,00%
5,00%
5,00%
25,00%
5,00%
een RODE driehoek
een rode DRIEHOEK
een RODE DRIEHOEK
EEN//RODE//DRIEHOEK
Pies s how percents
60,00%
90,00%
45,00%
50,00%
CG
2,56%
97,44%
70,00%
CC
15,00%
35,00%
50,00%
L1 Dutch
L2 Dutch
Language background
5,00%
95,00%
17,50%
82,50%
L1 Dutch
L2 Dutch
Language background
Figure 8. Accent patterns in L1 Dutch and L2 Dutch in the four experimental contexts
3.3.2. L2 French vs. L1 French
We now turn to the French interlanguage of the Dutch-speaking informants. Looking at the
relationship between news value and accentuation, it appears that this IL variety comes quite
close to the French target (Cramer’s V = 0,632; X2 = 205,159; df = 1; p < 0,001 in L2 French
vs. Cramer’s V = 0,615 in L1 French) (fig. 9). This result is in line with the prediction that it
may be easier for speakers of a plastic language (such as Dutch) to shift to a non-plastic
language (such as French) then the other way round.
Accentuation
Language background
L1 French
[- accent]
[+ accent]
L2 French
100,0%
94,33%
92,69%
80,0%
66,92%
67,14%
Percent
60,0%
40,0%
33,08%
32,86%
20,0%
7,31%
5,67%
0,0%
Given
Important
News value
Given
Important
News value
Figure 9. Relationship between news value and (de)accentuation in L1 and L2 French
If we compare the accent patterns that were produced by the native and non-native speakers of
French (fig. 10), we see first of all that the Dutch L2 speakers of French produce the same
default pattern as the native speakers in three out of the four experimental contexts. In this
pattern, the adjective and the noun are both accented, which recalls the French “bridge accent” and seems to confirm the idea that the French “bridge accent” should not be difficult to
acquire as it is an unmarked accent pattern. Yet, it should be noted that the structural
similarity between the French (unmarked) bridge accent and the Dutch double accent in the
NN-, GC-, and CC-conditions may also have played a facilitating role here. Another crucial
aspect is that the Dutch-speaking learners of French do not find it hard to deaccent
contextually given information in French, and actually overuse this strategy in their L2 speech
(GC-condition: 5% in L1 French vs. 18,42% in L2 French; CG-condition: 30% in L1 French
vs. 56,14% in L2 French).
NN
GC
Accent patterns
30,00%
10,00%
10,53%
5,00% 5,00%
18,42%
18,42%
15,79%
un cercle ROUGE
un CERCLE rouge
un CERCLE ROUGE
UN cercle ROUGE
UN//CERCLE//ROUGE
5,26%
30,00%
Pies s how percents
73,68%
60,00%
60,00%
CG
CC
5,26%
1,67% 1,67%
57,89%
30,00%
6,67%
6,67%
3,33%
10,53%
14,04%
38,60%
66,67%
56,14%
L1 French
L2 French
Language background
83,33%
75,44%
L1 French
L2 French
Language background
Figure 10. Accent patterns in L1 French and L2 French in the four experimental conditions
In the next stage, we summarize the main results of the contrastive IL analysis, and relate
them to comparable data for other IL varieties (provided such data are available).
3.4.
Step 4: contrastive-typological description of non-native speech
Our interlanguage analysis reveals that it is easier for speakers of a plastic language (i.e.
Dutch) to acquire the accentuation principles of a non-plastic language (i.e. French) than the
other way round (47% contextually adequate accent patterns in L2 Dutch vs. 78% in L2
French; X2 = 35,954; df = 2; p < 0,001; fig. 11). More specifically, our French-speaking learners of Dutch experience much difficulty in matching the accent distribution to the news value of the words, and tend to produce the same “default” accent pattern in every experimental
context, which leads to accent distributions that are not always contextually adequate. The
overuse of the “double accent”-pattern also results in the underrepresentation of cases of deaccented G-element in the GC- and CG-conditions. Conversely, the Dutch-speaking learners of
French do not find it hard to produce a “bridge accent” in all experimental conditions, al-
though a slight overuse of patterns with a deaccented G-element can be observed in the GCand CG-conditions.
78.36%
80.0%
Interlanguage variety
L2 Dutch
L2 French
60.0%
Percent
47.14%
40.0%
34.29%
18.57%
20.0%
11.70%
9.94%
0.0%
Cont. inadequate
Acceptable
Cont. adequate
Correction level
Figure 11. Percentage of contextually inadequate, acceptable, and adequate accent patterns in L2
Dutch and L2 French
Interestingly, the tendency not to match the accentuation to the news value of the words has
also been reported in other IL varieties, e.g. Spanish English (Ramirez Verdugo 2002), Hungarian and Polish English (Archibald 1997), Dutch English (Willems 1982). Counterevidence
is provided by Barlow (1998) who reports that his Spanish, Italian, and Chinese learners of
English at different levels of L2 proficiency did not make any mistake when assigning pitch
accent in L2 English. And this holds true for both normal/non-contrastive contexts with a
nuclear accent in default right-most position and contrastive contexts in which the L2 learners
had to move the nuclear accent from its right-most position onto a non-final word. Besides,
Archibald (1997) shows that it is the L1’s main accentuation rule that tends to be transferred
and overused in L2 speech, and two longitudinal studies of German English by Grosser
(1993) and Wieden (1997) report that L2 learners first need to master the English rule for normal/non-contrastive accentuation, which is essentially motivated structurally, before acquiring
the rule for contrastive accentuation and deaccentuation of contextually given information.
They also observe that their L2 learners tend to overuse the two types of rules before using
them in a contextually adequate way.
3.5.
Step 5: transfer analysis
The final step in our approach relates the contrastive-typological description of native and
non-native speech to each other in order to detect and explain the cases of transfer in L2. In
this respect, it was predicted, following Eckman (1987)’s Markedness Differential Hypothesis, that only the marked L1 patterns will be transferred from L1 to L2.
The analysis of the IL data of the French-speaking learners of Dutch reveals that,
contrary to expectation, they do not produce a (unmarked) phrase-final accent in their L24.
Rather, they produce a “double accent” in all experimental conditions 5, which recalls the L1
French strategy, i.e. using a “bridge accent” whatever the information value of the words may
be. This leads to accent patterns that are not always contextually adequate and to the underrepresentation of cases with a deaccented G-element in the GC- and CG-conditions (i.e. negative transfer). French also has a deaccentuation rule, but it is marked. And this explains why
this pattern does not get transferred to the learners’ interlanguage. Interestingly, this pattern
can also be observed in other interlanguage varieties6, which reinforces the idea that marked
pragmatic accentuation rules are more difficult to acquire than their unmarked structurallymotivated counterparts. Conversely, the analysis of the L2 French data from the Dutch-speaking learners shows that they do not find it difficult to apply the marked deaccentuation rule
of their L2, and even tend to overuse it in comparison with native speech. This can be
explained by the fact that the French deaccentuation rule, despite its marked status, is less
marked than in the learners’ mother tongue.
Nor do they in their L1. This may support Di Cristo (1999, 2000)’s contention that the bridge accent is gaining
ground in French. An alternative explanation is that the pattern we found in our L1 French data is actually an
idiosyncrasy of Belgian French. However, this does not call into question the validity of the IL-L1 comparison.
5
Notice that the structural similarity/congruence between the L1 Dutch double accent in the NN-,GC-, and CCconditions and the L1 French bridge accent may have had a facilitating effect on the production of contextually
adequate patterns in these conditions (i.e. positive transfer).
6
The results reported in this paper also replicate earlier observations by Hiligsmann & Rasier (2002) and Rasier
(2003) in which use was made of a reading task and spontaneous dialogues.
4
Taken together, these findings confirm the idea that there are qualitative differences in
terms of learning process between unmarked structurally-motivated accentuation rules and
their marked pragmatically-motivated counterparts. There is also supporting evidence for the
claim that such qualitative differences are reflected in the extent to which they are subject to
transfer to and/or over-/underuse in the learners’ L2 speech.
4.
Conclusions
This paper investigated the L1-L2 relationship in the L2 acquisition of prosody. We first reviewed earlier approaches to transfer in SLA research, and argued that these approaches actually did not pay (enough) attention to typological constraints on transfer. Then, we proposed
an alternative method in which such constraints are taken into account, and exemplified it in a
study of prosodic transfer in L2 Dutch and L2 French. As it stands, our approach does not
give insight into the communicative consequences of the learners’ (L1-induced) accentuation
strategies. Using perception tests, future work will concentrate on the impact of the learners’
accentuation strategies on the overall acceptability and comprehensibility of their speech.
5.
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