Prosody and prosodic transfer in foreign language acquisition: Cantonese and Japanese

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This volume presents an in-depth analysis of the prosodic system and prosodic transfer effects in two distinct languages, representing tone and pitch-accent types. The first part explores key features of each language's prosody through a thorough review of contemporary prosodic and phonological theories, including metrical theory and autosegmental phonology. The second part offers a contrastive study aimed at predicting areas of prosodic interference in foreign language classrooms, establishing a hierarchy of transfer parameters, and providing empirical verification where applicable. The study makes several unique contributions: (a) it proposes a stress/accent hypothesis that closely examines the prosodic behavior of one language beyond lexical tone; (b) the detailed prosodic analyses are designed to aid second language learning for speakers who typically possess a strong first language accent; (c) the examination of various language types uncovers universal principles that may challenge the perceived barriers between distinct prosodic types, suggesting that these distinctions can be more superficial than previously thought when considering new interpretations of prosodic behavior.