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Part of
L3 Development After the Initial State
Edited by Megan M. Brown-Bousfield, Suzanne Flynn and Éva Fernández-Berkes
[Studies in Bilingualism 65] 2023
► pp. 96–120

L3 prosody

Cross-linguistic influence of prosodic features in Mandarin and English by Cantonese multilinguals

| City University of Hong Kong
| The Education University of Hong Kong
| The Education University of Hong Kong

The direction of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) of phonological features among L1, L2, and L3 of a multilingual depends indispensably on the proficiency levels of the L2 and the L3. Cantonese speakers in Guangdong Province have Mandarin as an L2 and English as an L3, while Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong have English as an L2 and Mandarin as an L3. This study aims to examine the CLI of Cantonese multilinguals’ Mandarin pitch span and the existence of the neutral tone on the pitch of stressed syllables and the duration of unstressed syllables in their English utterances. The study analyzed English and Mandarin speech data collected from 18 Cantonese multilinguals from Hong Kong and Guangdong Province. The results revealed progressive and regressive phonological CLI across the three languages spoken by the Cantonese multilinguals with different L2 and L3 proficiency levels.

Keywords: pronunciation learning, L2 phonology, multilingualism, cross-linguistic influence, prosody
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Cantonese, Mandarin, and English prosody
    • 2.2Studies of prosody acquisition
    • 2.3Directionality of cross-linguistic influence
  • 3.Hypothesis and research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Procedure
    • 4.3Pitch analysis
    • 4.4Duration analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Pitch
    • 5.2Duration
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Influence of pitch span
    • 6.2Influence from pitch span to pitch level
    • 6.3Influence of syllable duration ratio
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 9 October 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.65.05han
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