Does prosodic similarity matter in L2 production? The case of Korean learners of French

Bénédicte Grandon (1) , Hiyon Yoo (1)

1 LLF UMR7110 - Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle

French and Korean share similar prosodic characteristics as far as rhythm and intonation are concerned. In order to determine how this prosodic similarity affects the second language production, we propose in this paper to examine these prosodic parameters in read productions by Korean learners of French as a second language compared to French native speakers. We show that the productions of Korean learners and French native speakers present minor differences: concerning rhythm, Korean learners are less systematic in lengthening the last vowel at a phrase-final position while the overall pitch contour is similar for both groups of speakers, especially for the subject and object phrases. We argue that these minor differences are not sufficient enough for the detection of a “foreign accent” only with prosodic cues.

Mots clés: rhythm; intonation; prosody; Second Language; Speech production; Korean; French

Domaines: Linguistique

Bénédicte Grandon, Hiyon Yoo. Does prosodic similarity matter in L2 production? The case of Korean learners of French. 10th International Seminar on Speech Production (ISSP), May 2014, Köln, Germany. ⟨hal-01080022⟩