L1 and L2 Accent Alignment in German and Canadian English

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Sudu, Kristin E.

• This study is a replication of a previous study done by Atterer & Ladd (2004) looking at the prosodic contours of English and German bilinguals. Atterer & Ladd (2004) showed that segmental anchoring of prenuclear rising accents occurs in both English and German, but speakers of these languages align the L(ow) and H(igh) tones of these accents at different points within the segmental material. Native alignment patterns were shown to be transferred into their L2 when German speakers spoke English. In this study I show that native Canadian English speakers also transfer native alignment patterns into their L2 (German). I also found that Canadian English speakers’ alignment patterns were significantly later than those of the British English control group used by Atterer & Ladd (2004).

• Date created

  2019-04-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • bilingual
  • L2 English
  • bilingualism
  • fundamental frequency alignment
  • cross-linguistic transfer
  • English
  • second language English
  • cross-linguistic prosodic alignment transfer
  • German
  • second language German
  • prosody
  • L2 German

• Type of Item

  Report

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-3mp4-y811

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International