The marked status of Accent 2 in Central Swedish

Based on results from psycholinguistic and neuro- linguistic research on the perception of word ac- cents in Central Swedish, we argue that Accent 2 could be seen as “marked,” as opposed to the un- marked Accent 1. The markedness of Accent 2 is assumed to be both phonetic, due to its relatively more complex high tone, and cognitive, due to the fact that the Accent 2 tone activates more word forms and thus increases processing load

Using Nigerian English in an international academic setting

This study examines the English pronunciation of a group of Nigerian students at a university in Sweden from the point of view of their intelligibility to two groups of listeners: 1) native speakers of English who are teachers at the university; 2) nonnative speakers of English who are teachers at the university. It is found that listeners who are accustomed to interacting with international students do better than those who are not, and that native speakers of English do no better or worse than non-native listeners. The conclusion is drawn that locally useful varieties of Nigerian English may not easily be used as for wider communication and that students preparing to study abroad would find it useful to gain access to a more widely intelligible variety

Discourse structure and information structure : interfaces and prosodic realization

In this paper we review the current state of research on the issue of discourse structure (DS) / information structure (IS) interface. This field has received a lot of attention from discourse semanticists and pragmatists, and has made substantial progress in recent years. In this paper we summarize the relevant studies. In addition, we look at the issue of DS/ISinteraction at a different level—that of phonetics. It is known that both information structure and discourse structure can be realized prosodically, but the issue of phonetic interaction between the prosodic devices they employ has hardly ever been discussed in this context. We think that a proper consideration of this aspect of DS/IS-interaction would enrich our understanding of the phenomenon, and hence we formulate some related research-programmatic positions

Prosodic description: An introduction for fieldworkers

This article provides an introductory tutorial on prosodic features such as tone and accent for researchers working on little-known languages. It specifically addresses the needs of non-specialists and thus does not presuppose knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of prosodic features. Instead, it intends to introduce the uninitiated reader to a field often shied away from because of its (in part real, but in part also just imagined) complexities. It consists of a concise overview of the basic phonetic phenomena (section 2) and the major categories and problems of their functional and phonological analysis (sections 3 and 4). Section 5 gives practical advice for documenting and analyzing prosodic features in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Intonation in neurogenic foreign accent syndrome

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a motor speech disorder in which changes to segmental as well as suprasegmental aspects lead to the perception of a foreign accent in speech. This paper focuses on one suprasegmental aspect, namely that of intonation. It provides an in-depth analysis of the intonation system of four speakers with FAS with the aim of establishing the intonational changes that have taken place as well as their underlying origin. Using the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational analysis, four different levels of intonation, i.e. inventory, distribution, realisation and function, were examined. Results revealed that the speakers with FAS had the same structural inventory at their disposal as the control speakers, but that they differed from the latter in relation to the distribution, implementation and functional use of their inventory. In contrast to previous findings, the current results suggest that these intonational changes cannot be entirely attributed to an underlying intonation deficit but also reflect secondary manifestations of physiological constraints affecting speech support systems and compensatory strategies. These findings have implications for the debate surrounding intonational deficits in FAS, advocating a reconsideration of current assumptions regarding the underlying nature of intonation impairment in FAS

Swedish Surnames, British Accents : Passing among Post-Soviet migrants in Helsinki

In analysing efforts to pass as white, this article examines the ways racialized difference materializes on the bodies construed as “Eastern European”. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Russian-speaking migrants in Helsinki, it examines their attempts to inhabit whiteness through tactics of passing, such as changing their surnames, working on their accents, and adjusting how they dress. I argue that these efforts to pass as not “Russian” should be understood through the postcolonial formation of Europeanness, with its internal racialized division between (proper) Western Europeanness and (incomplete) Eastern Europeanness. The labour of approximating whiteness through passing draws attention to sites of racialized differentiation such as accent, audibility, language, surnames, and clothing. These efforts of attempting to pass for someone Russian speakers are not recognized as point to the structural racist hierarchies that refuse to attach value to their bodies.Peer reviewe

Nuclear Intonation in Swedish : Evidence from Experimental-Phonetic Studies and a Comparison with German

This thesis investigates Swedish intonation patterns and their interaction with word accent realisation in various pragmatic conditions, using German as a reference language. The point of departure is the wide-spread assumption that Swedish, as a language with a tonal word accent distinction, has a considerably smaller repertoire of nuclear intonation contours than German and other so-called intonation languages. In particular, whereas only one sentence accent has been modelled for Swedish so far (a high focal accent H-), a multiple paradigmatic contrast of sentence accents (e.g. H*, L*+H, H+L*) has been assumed for German. It is hypothesised, however, that the contemporary models of German and Swedish intonation are based on different research traditions, and hence, that the intonation of the two languages might be more similar than commonly assumed. Three production studies, based on recordings from 21 speakers, and one perception (reaction time) experiment involving 20 listeners are reported. In the first two production studies, the intonation of test phrases elicited in German and Swedish speakers in a variety of pragmatic conditions is compared by analysing F0 and to some degree duration patterns. The most central pragmatic distinction treated in this thesis involves the focussing of new vs. given information, the latter case occurring in confirmations. The main result of these studies is that Swedish and German seem to have a similar inventory of nuclear intonation patterns, which have basically the same pragmatic functions in the two languages. For instance, an "early fall", a pattern involving a fall onto a low-pitched stressed vowel, can signal a confirmation in both German and Swedish. This result suggests that, in addition to the well-established high accent (H-), Swedish also has a paradigmatic choice of sentence accents, involving a falling accent (H+L-). The third production study and the reaction time experiment concentrate on the "early fall" found in confirmations and investigate the interaction of word accent and intonation. The results show that the Swedish word accent distinction can be neutralised in connection with the "early fall", a situation which may be related to the perceptual enhancement of the intonational contrast between a high (H-) and a falling (H+L-) sentence accent

Production and Perception of Swedish Word Accents by Somali L1 Speakers

In this thesis, the production and perception of Swedish word accents by Somali L1 speakers is investigated. The Feature hypothesis, stating that it is easier to acquire a phonological feature in an L2 if the same phonological feature is used in the L1 will be the framework used. Somali is a language that also makes us of word accents. Therefore, the two languages are placed in the same level of the Tonal prominence hierarchy and the L2 acquisition of Swedish word accents by Somali L1 speakers is suitable to test. The production is tested by analyzing read speech, with elicited target words in focal position with either accent 1 or accent 2. The perception is tested with a discrimination test of the two word accents, and two different Swedish varieties are used: Central Swedish and South Swedish. Two groups are tested. One consists of Somali L1 speakers with Swedish L2 and one consists of speakers with both Somali and Swedish L1. The results show that the L2 group does make the distinction between A1 and A2 in the production test, but the result for the 2L1 group is less clear and can be interpreted as that they did not make use of the Swedish word accents. In the perception test, none of the two groups performed better than chance and had significantly lower scores than a Swedish L1 control group. The findings in this thesis confirm the Feature hypothesis in the production part, but contradict it in the perception part