Transfer of rising tone patterns from Swedish L1 into Spanish L2 – which are the communicative consequences?

Abstract

Would prosodic transfer from Swedish L1 into Spanish L2 have any effects on communication with native Spanish speakers? The study investigates the contribution to the perceived foreign accent of the L2 prosody displayed by Swedish learners, focusing especially on the role played by rising boundary tones and their pragmatic values. Swedish L1, Spanish L1 and Spanish L2 data, analysed acoustically by Aronsson and Fant (2014), were evaluated in perception experiments with native speakers of Spanish and Swedish and the results show that the intersubjective value associated with a rising boundary tone differs depending on whether the evaluator is a native speaker of Swedish or Spanish, and that the transferred patterns not only contribute to a foreign accent, they are also capable of affecting pragmatic values.