Volume 67, Issue 3

Previous studies have shown that characteristics of a person’s first language (L1) may transfer to a second language (L2). The current study looks at the extent to which this holds for aspects of intonation as well. More specifically, we investigate to what extent traces of the L1 can be discerned in the way intonation is used in the L2 for two functions: (1) to highlight certain words by making them sound more prominent and (2) to signal continuation or finality in a list by manipulating the speech melody. To this end, the article presents an explorative study into the way focus and boundaries are marked prosodically in Zulu, and it also compares such prosodic functions in two variants of English in South Africa, i.e., English spoken as an L1, and English spoken as an L2/additional language by speakers who have Zulu as their L1. The latter language is commonly referred to as Black South African English. This comparison is interesting from a typological perspective, as Zulu is intonationally different from English, especially in the way prosody is exploited for signalling informationally important stretches of speech. Using a specific elicitation procedure, we found in a first study that speakers of South African English (as L1) mark focused words and position within a list by intonational means, just as in other L1 varieties of English, whereas Zulu only uses intonation for marking continuity or finality. A second study focused on speakers of Black South African English, and compared the prosody of proficient versus less proficient speakers. We found that the proficient speakers were perceptually equivalent to L1 speakers of English in their use of intonation for marking focus and boundaries. The less proficient speakers marked boundaries in a similar way as L1 speakers of English, but did not use prosody for signalling focus, analogous to what is typical of their native language. Acoustic observations match these perceptual results.

A laryngographic and laryngoscopic study of tone production in Northern Vietnamese, a language whose tones combine both fundamental frequency (f0) modulations and voice qualities (phonation types), was conducted with 5 male and 5 female speakers. Results show that the f0 contours of Northern Vietnamese tones are not only attributable to changes in vocal fold length and tension (partly through changes in larynx height), but that f0 drops are also largely caused by the glottal configurations responsible for the contrastive voice qualities associated with some of the tones. We also find that voice quality contrasts are mostly due to glottal constriction: they occasionally involve additional ventricular fold incursion and epiglottal constriction, but these articulations are usually absent.

This paper presents an exploratory study in the field of emphasis in German. It provides a comprehensive acoustic analysis for a type of emphasis that intensifies lexical meanings either positively or negatively. A speech corpus was recorded using an elicitation method adapted to yield natural-sounding, conversational, expressive speech under controlled conditions. Supporting the distinction between positive and negative intensification, two clearly different phonetic profiles emerged. These phonetic profiles of positive and negative intensification involve voice quality as well as the dynamics of the speech signal across its segmental and prosodic layers. By means of these profiles, the intensifying emphases were correctly classified by a discriminant analysis as positive or negative in around 90% of the cases. Moreover, indications were found for a third type of intensifying emphasis, which was called ‘reinforcement’. Its multidimensional phonetic profile falls in between the ones of positive and negative intensification.