The phonological development of adult Japanese learners of English : a longitudinal study of perception and production.

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Acoustic speech analysis of second language English stress system

L2 learners' timing of the falling pitch and how they mark word prominence with prosodic features is investigated based on longitudinal production data collected from three adult Japanese EFL learners. Data show that although the learners' prosody appeared to be distinctly non-native throughout the data col­lection, they did exhibit changes over time: two of the subjects started to pro­duce reduced vowels and their timing of the falling pitch became target-like. It is suggested that the acquisition of the reduced/neutral vowel is the key to acquisi­tion of prosodic features (i.e. timing) of English, revealing the interaction of a segmental process and a prosodic process. It is concluded that L2 learners fol­low the developmental sequences observed in L1 acquisition