Presentation

Swedish Tonal Word Accents Produced by Vietnamese L1-Speakers

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Abstract

This study addresses the question of whether Vietnamese L1 speakers make an adequate distinction in tonal patterns when producing two tonal accent words in their L2, Swedish. Both languages use tonal features to distinguish lexical meaning. Some previous studies suggest that a lexical tonal L1 may provide L2 learners an advantage in perceptually discriminating between different tones in another tone language, while other studies show that this may not necessarily be the case. What constitutes an adequate distinction is identified as such by native speakers/listeners of Swedish. Results revealed that no adequate distinction is made between the tone accents by the L2 speakers. However, one tonal pattern is produced more frequently and it seems to resemble one of the Swedish accents, but not the other. It may be that one of the Vietnamese tones is similar to a certain accent pattern in Swedish and is therefore recognized by the L2 speakers and transferred in tonal accent production.

How to Cite:

Zetterholm, E. & Tronnier, M., (2014) “Swedish Tonal Word Accents Produced by Vietnamese L1-Speakers”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 6(1).