Part of
Above and Beyond the Segments: Experimental linguistics and phoneticsEdited by Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels O. Schiller and Ellen van Zanten
[Not in series 189] 2014
► pp. 28–41
Edited by Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels O. Schiller and Ellen van Zanten
[Not in series 189] 2014
► pp. 28–41
Pitch accent placement in Dutch as a second language
An exploratory investigation
How do non-native speakers of Dutch differ from native speakers in pitch accent placement? Previous investigations report over-accentuation, but there is also evidence that non-native (L2) speakers have no problems accenting new information and deaccenting given information. A text was read aloud by L2 speakers with Mandarin, French, Polish and Hungarian as native languages (L1). Based on native speaker production, the “accentability” of words was determined. The L2 speakers produced most “obligatory” accents, but not most “forbidden” accents. Also, L2 speakers accented two thirds of the optionally accentable words, while L1 speakers accented only a third. These results suggest that over-accentuation in L2 does not necessarily mean inappropriate pitch accent location.
References
Baumann, S., & Schumacher, P.B
(2012) (De-)Accentuation and the processing of information status: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Language and Speech, 55, 361–381. 
Caspers, J., Bosma, E., Kramm, F., & Reya, P
(2012) Deaccentuation in Dutch as a second language: Where does the accent go to? In M. Elenbaas, & S. Aalberse (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2012 (pp. 27–40). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Caspers, J., & Horłoza, K
(2012) Intelligibility of non-natively produced Dutch words: Interaction between segmental and suprasegmental errors. Phonetica, 69, 94–107.
Caspers, J., & Kepinska, O
(2011) The influence of word-level prosodic structure of the mother tongue on production of word stress in Dutch as a second language. In W.S. Lee, & E. Zee (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 420–423).
Caspers, J., & Santen, A. van
(2006) Nederlands uit Franse en Chinese mond: Invloed van T1 op de plaatsing van klemtoon in Nederlands als tweede taal? [Dutch from French and Chinese mouth: Influence of L1 on the location of stress in Dutch as a second language?] Nederlandse Taalkunde, 11, 289–318.
Caspers, J., & Wouden, T. van der
(2008) The perception of modal particles in Dutch as a second language. Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen, 80(2), 9–18.
Council of Europe (
2011) Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Retrieved from [URL]
Cruttenden, A
(2006) The de-accenting of given information: A cognitive universal? In G. Bernini, & M. Schwartz (Eds.), Pragmatic organization of discourse in the languages of Europe (pp. 311–356). The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gussenhoven, C
(2011) Sentential prominence in English. In M.E.C. van Oostendorp, C. Ewen, K. Rice, & E. Hume (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology (pp. 2778–2806). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hahn, L.D
(2004) Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 201–233.
He, X
(2012) Mandarin-accented Dutch prosody. PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen.
He, X., Heuven, V.J. van, & Gussenhoven, C
(2010) Choosing the optimal pitch accent location in Dutch by Chinese learners and native listeners. In K. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, M. Wrembel, & M. Kul (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, New Sounds 2010 (pp. 185–190).
Koutny, I., Olaszy, G., & Olaszi, P
(2000) Prosody prediction from text in Hungarian and its realization in TTS conversion. International Journal of Speech Technology, 3, 187–200.
Ladd, D.R
(1996) Intonational phonology. Cambridge: CUP.
Landis, J.R., & Koch, G.G
(1977) The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33, 159–174.
Michaux, M.-C., & Caspers, J
(2013) The production of Dutch word stress by francophone learners. In P. Mertens, & A.C. Simon (Eds.), Proceedings of the Prosody-Discourse Interface 2013 (IDP-2013) (pp. 89–94). Leuven.
Michaux, M.-C., Hiligsmann, Ph., & Rasier, L
(2012) Het klemtoonpatroon in de tussentaal van Franstalige leerders van het Nederlands [The interlanguage stress pattern of Francophone learners of Dutch]. XII. Internationaler Germanistenkongress 2010 (pp. 321–332). Warsaw.
Munro, M.J
(2008) Foreign accent and speech intelligibility. In J.G. Hansen Edwards, & M.L. Zampini (Eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition (pp. 193–218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Rasier, L
(2006) Prosodie en vreemdetaalverwerving: Accentdistributie in het Frans en Nederlands als vreemde taal
[Prosody and foreign language acquisition: Accent distribution in French and Dutch as foreign language]
. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Université Catholique de Louvain.
Rasier, L., & Hiligsmann, Ph
(2007) Prosodic transfer from L1 to L2: Theoretical and methodological issues. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique française, 28, 41–66.
Swerts, M., Krahmer, E., & Avesani, C
(2002) Prosodic marking of information status in Dutch and Italian: A comparative analysis. Journal of Phonetics, 30, 629–654.
Terken, J., & Nooteboom, S.G
(1987) Opposite effects of accentuation and deaccentuation on verification latencies for given and new information. Language and cognitive processes, 2, 145–163.
Vallduví, E
(1991) The role of plasticity in the association of focus and prominence. Proceedings of the Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, 7, 295–306.
Wiśniewski, M
(2001) Zarys fonetyki i fonologii współczesnego języka polskiego [Outline of the phonetics and phonology of contemporary Polish]. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika.