Xuan Giao Le (Vietnam) p38-55
2017 Issue 2
Sondernummer zum Thema: Phonetik
Gastherausgeber: Klaus Geyer (Dänemark)
Abstract
Word stress is obviously a relevant prosodic aspect in teaching German as a foreign language (L2), among other things because the majority of German words are polysyllabic. On the other hand, “a large number of morphemic words [… in Vietnamese] are monosyllabic” (Nguyễn 1967: 325). Based on this fundamental difference between the two languages, this study investigates the aspect of word stress in 39 German compounds, read by 10 Vietnamese learners, compared to another group of 10 German native speakers. The relations in pitch, intensity and duration between vowels with primary and subordinate stress were taken into account. Results show significant differences in the parameters of pitch and intensity between the two groups of speakers. While the German group produced clearly higher pitch and intensity on the primarily stressed vowels in comparison to the ones with subordinate stressed, the two types of vowels were realized with nearly equal level of pitch and intensity by the Vietnamese group. Analysis of the relation of vowel duration showed diverse results. The study claims a lack of contrast between these two types of stresses in German compounds produced by Vietnamese learners. It is further proposed that a transfer of typical prosodic features in Vietnamese caused the attested interference in the target language.