Quantity Convergence, Quality Divergence: Disentangling Fluency and Accuracy in L2 Mandarin Prosody

TL;DR

This study examines how advanced L2 Mandarin learners acquire prosodic structures, revealing a non-linear pattern where they maintain boundary quantity but diverge in structural mapping, leading to a distorted prosodic hierarchy.

Contribution

It uncovers the non-linear development of prosody in L2 Mandarin, highlighting divergence in structural mapping despite boundary quantity convergence.

Findings

High-proficiency learners match native boundary quantity at the phrase level.

Structural mapping of prosodic boundaries significantly diverges from native patterns.

Learners maintain long phrasal output by altering prosodic hierarchy.

Abstract

While second language (L2) learners may acquire target syntactic word order, mapping this syntax onto appropriate prosodic structures remains a persistent challenge. This study investigates the fossilization and stability of the L2 syntax-prosody interface by comparing 67 native Mandarin speakers with 67 Vietnamese learners using the BLCU-SAIT corpus. By integrating C-ToBI boundary annotation with Dependency Grammar analysis, we examined both the quantity of prosodic boundaries and their mapping to syntactic relations. Results reveal a non-linear acquisition: although high-proficiency learners (VNH) converge to the native baseline in boundary quantity at the Major Phrase level (B3), their structural mapping significantly diverges. Specifically, VNH demote the prosodic boundary at the Subject-Verb (SBV) interface (Major Phrase B3 -> Prosodic Word B1), while erroneously promoting the boundary at the Verb-Object (VOB) interface (Prosodic Word B1 -> Major Phrase B3). This strategy allows learners to maintain high long phrasal output at the expense of structural accuracy. This results in a distorted prosodic hierarchy where the native pattern is inverted.