Prosodic marking of information status in L1 and L2

1
Prosodic marking of information status in L1 and
L2

• dr.Laurent Rasier
• Université catholique de Louvain
• laurent.rasier_at_uclouvain.be

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Introduction

• Little attention paid to prosody in L2
• Important role in  foreign accent 
• Social communicative consequences
• Research program
• Learning process of prosody?
• Difficulties?
• Factors influencing L2 prosody?
• Use of (de)accentuation to signal information
  status in L2 Dutch L2 French

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Accent in L2

• Distributional studies of accent in L2
• Overproduction in L2
• Overgeneralization of rules, transfer
• Markedness
• Accent in L2 Dutch and L2 French
• Poorly studied
• Difficult to acquire

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Research questions

• Germanic vs. Romance languages
• Germ. lgues accent // news value
• Rom. lgues accent ? news value
• Possible impact on L2 acquisition of accent
• Research questions
• Accentuation in L1 Dutch ? accentuation in L1
  French?
• Impact on acquisition of L2 Dutch and L2 French?
• What about prosodic transfer?

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Methodology

• Experimental accent placement test in L1 L2
• Description of geometrical figures
• Variation of name and/of colour
• 40 informants, advanced level
• 20 French-speaking learners of Dutch
• 20 Dutch-speaking learners of French
• Non-specialists (BAC2 students of economics)

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Methodology (2)

• Situational contrasts
• Control news value
• New contextually unknwon
• Given contextually known
• Contrastive con-trast with preceding

New New
Contrastive Given (N) Given Contrastive (F)
Given Contrastive (N) Contrastive Given (F)
Contrastive Contrastive
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Methodological framework
1a
L1 French
L1 Dutch
1b
1c
1c
Contrastive prosodic grammar L1
2
2
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PROSODIC TRANSFER
4
Contrastive prosodic grammar L2
3b
L2 French
L2 Dutch
3a
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Accent patterns in L1 Dutch
9
Accent patterns in L1 French
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Typology of accent systems
Unmarked
Marked
Pragmatic structural rules
Structural rules only
Structural pragmatic rules
Pragmatic rules only
e.g. Portuguese, Spanish, Italian
e.g. French, Romanian
e.g. Dutch, German, English
?

• Contrast Dutch French
• French structural gt pragmatic factors
• Dutch pragmatic gt structural factors
• Eckmanns Markedness Differential Hypothesis
• A more marked than B if A ? B but B ? ?
• Pragmatic rules more marked than structural ones
  marked rules more difficult than unmarked ones
• Accentuation in Dutch more marked than in French,
  so more difficult

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Typology of accentuation rules
Unmarked
Marked
Structural
Structural / pragmatic
Pragmatic / structural
Pragmatic
FR - final accent NL - rhythmic accent
FR - bridge accent NL - /
NL - integra- tive accent (d.i. broad focus)
FR - extended bridge ac-cent
FR - narrow focus - deaccen- tuation
NL - narrow fo-cus - deaccen- tuation

• Predictions (based on Eckmann 1987)
• Marked patterns more difficult than unmarked ones
• If marked in L2 but less marked than in L1, then
  not difficult
• The more marked in L1, the less likely to be
  transferred to L2

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Accentuation in L2 Dutch/L2 French

• L2 Dutch
• 48 correct
• L2 French
• 75 correct
• Easier D ? F than F ? D

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Accent patterns in L1/L2 Dutch
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Deaccentuation in L1/L2 Dutch
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Accent patterns L1/L2 French
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Over-/Underuse in L2 French

• Overuse
• Narrow focus
• Accent on each word
• Underuse
• Bridge accent
• Extended bridge accent
• Not produced
• Final accent

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Accentuationpausing problem

• Accent on each word ? contextually inadequate
• een gele driehoek EEN euh GEEL // VIERkant
• un cercle bleu UN // TRIanGLE // euh BLEU
• Accent on both lexical items in the phrase ? not
  always contextually inadequate
• start of the game een ROde ehm // DRIEhoek
• een rode driehoek een GEle // DRIEhoek
• un cercle rouge un CERcle // BLEU

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Pausingaccentuation
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Conclusion

• Accentuation Dutch ? accentuation French
• Impact on accentuation in L2
• Transfer
• Link with markedness
• Pausing
• Future work
• Phonetics phonology of accent in L2
• Use of prosody syntax in the linguistic marking
  of information status in L2

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Thank you for your attention!Bedankt voor uw
aandacht!