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  • Studies on cross-linguistic transfer patterning and prosodic typology: Cantonese, Japanese, English by Esther Yuk Wah Lai
  • Liang Chen
Studies on cross-linguistic transfer patterning and prosodic typology: Cantonese, Japanese, English. By Esther Yuk Wah Lai. (Languages of the world 28.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2003. Pp. 93. ISBN 3895867012. $58.80.

The present book consists of four studies on prosody and transfer patterning with reference to Cantonese, Japanese, and English. In the preface (3–7), Lai points out that studies on the distinct prosodic types in Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean are rare, but crosslinguistic prosodic studies using these languages are essential for discovering the universals and specifics of human language. Moreover, such studies will enable second/foreign language (L2) teachers and learners to predict or avoid potential areas of interference, and consequently to make the acquisition of near-native pronunciation possible.

In ‘Cantonese stress: Its forms and functions’ (8–27), Largues that Cantonese does not have regular syllabic timing, but rather has a metrical organization in the form of durational stress, with bimoraic syllables organized into bisyllabic templates that are further grouped into larger iambic structures of prosody.

In ‘Predictability and universality of transfer patterning in distinct prosodic types’ (28–51), L presents evidence from a Cantonese learner’s tonal transfer and a Japanese learner’s regular moraic durational transfer to support the role of universal grammar in second language acquisition. The transfer patterning in distinct prosodic language types (Cantonese, Japanese, and English) is argued to follow from the proposed universal contrastive transfer hierarchy, which postulates transfer prominence in ascending order when (i) parameter settings coincide in L1 and L2, (ii) parameter settings contrast drastically, (iii) parameter settings are superficially similar but different in essence, and (iv) a feature is rigidly set and lacks variability in L1 but has a rich repertoire and varies extensively in L2.

The paper ‘A Cantonese accent: Transfer of Cantonese prosodic traits in the acquisition of Japanese as a second language’ (52–71) highlights potential prosodic errors in the interlanguage of Cantonese learners of Japanese. Such errors (e.g. the lengthening of Japanese monosyllables, the irregularizing of tempo, or lack of accent reduction when lexical items are conjoined) are argued to result from differences in the prosodic organization of the target language (Japanese) and the native language (Cantonese).

The last paper, ‘Which is more difficult for the Japanese native speaker to master, Cantonese or English prosody?’, argues that English prosodic is more difficult for Japanese native speakers to master due to the intrinsic complexity of the English prosodic system (e.g. while Cantonese lexical tone ‘involves only one parameter of pitch and rest at the initial lexical level’, English word stress ‘involves multiple parameters of pitch, length, loudness and quality’; 90).

Each paper in the book can be read independently, and as a whole they demonstrate some distinct prosodic features of Cantonese, Japanese, and English and the potential learning difficulties that will arise for second language learners. The claims made throughout the book, however, seem to be based more on anecdotal notes than on solid empirical evidence.

Liang Chen
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
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