Prosodic Phonology and the Acquisition of a Second Language

This paper discusses several patterns of incorrect production and perception of a foreign language, and offers accounts of these error patterns in terms of a particular theory of the representation of phonological structure. All the errors discussed involve some aspect of prosody, and are argued to result from differences in constraints on prosodic structure in the native language and the foreign language. These error patterns are interesting from two perspectives. First, the cases discussed provide justification for the claim that linguistic theory is relevant to second language (L2) acquisition by presenting evidence that the errors of language learners can be seen as perfectly comprehensible and even predictable given particular theoretical constructs. Second, the patterns discussed provide evidence for the relevance of data from L2 acquisition to the concerns of linguistic theory. Specifically, I argue that error patterns may provide evidence for particular analyses of the native language grammar, evidence that may not be available from the study of the native language alone.