A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CHILDREN’S AND

ADULTS’ ACQUISITION
OF TONE ACCENTS IN SWEDISH’

Beata Schmid
Brown University

This comparative study investigates first and second language learners’

acquisition of tone accents in Swedish. Tone accent distribution is governed by
morphophonological rules and the accents are manifested in characteristic pitch
patterns. L1 learners acquire the full accent distinction at around the age of five,
while many L2 learners never do. The tone accent production of two monolingual
Swedish children (1;ll-25) recorded longitudinally over seven months was
compared to that of American adults acquiring Swedish as L2. Both populations
overgeneralized one pitch pattern to all bisyllabic words: children used Accent 2
(two-peaked) and adults Accent 1 (one-peaked), analogous to the prevailing pattern
of their L1. These results are discussed in terms of comparing children’s
acquisitional strategies with those of L2 learners. Furthermore, the children’s early
acquisition of a marked phenomenon (Accent 2) forces us to reconsider markedness
criteria and whether Accent 2 is marked from a production point of view.

INTRODUCTION

This is a comparative study of first and second language learners’

production of tone accents in Swedish. My interest in investigating
children’s and adults’ acquisition of tone accents arises from the
following.
(a) Both first (Ll) and second (L2) language learners acquire tone accents
relatively late. I shall explore the possible reasons for this delay in
acquisition.
(b) All normally developing children acquire tone accents, but many
adult L2 learners do not. A number of researchers hold that neurological
processes indeed indicate age specific skills (Pen field and Roberts 1959,
Lenneberg 1967, Krashen 1973). The discussion concerning an ideal age
period for language acquisition was originally triggered by Lenneberg’s

‘A shorter version of this paper was presented at the Tenth Annual Boston University
Conference on Child Language Development, October 25-27, 1985. 1 wish to thank Pat
Clancy, Sheila Blumstein, Phil Lieberman, and two anonymous reviewers for extensive
comments.

185
I86 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

(1967) hypothesis that there is a critical period for language acquisition

that ends at puberty, due to the completion of interhemispheric
specialization of the brain. Krashen (1973) reexamined Lenneberg’s data
and found that there was no evidence for postulating that the
lateralization process takes place just before puberty. It is questionable
whether we should actually speak of ‘‘critical periods” for language
acquisition in a one-dimensional way. Walsh and Diller (1981) suggest
that the stages are developmental: the older learner does not lose certain
abilities, but develops other abilities. It is possible that the acquisition of
phonology is a low-order process, while syntax, for example, is a high-
order process (Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle 1978). In this paper, I shall
compare the children’s and adults’ production of tone accents and the
possible strategies they are using in the acquisitional process.
(c) Neurological factors are not the only influence on the adults’ language
learning ability. Another important influence is the first language:
linguistic patterns in the target language are likely to be influenced by the
first language, and some linguistic areas may be more sensitive than
others. This phenomenon is generally referred to as interference. The
claim has been that those features that are different in L2 will be more
difficult for the language learner. By means of Constrastive Analysis
(Lado 1957), the difficult areas can be identified. This claim has been
modified by Eckman (1977), who proposed Markedness Differential
Hypothesis, in which it is stated that elements that are universally
marked and different from L1 will pose difficulties, while unmarked
features are less problematic. How marked is the occurrence of tone
accents in Swedish, and how does markedness affect L1 and L2
acquisition?
(d) Other factors that may influence the language learner are motivation
and other sociolinguistic issues, which will not be discussed in detail in
this paper. It has been shown, however, that problems with prosodic
features contribute considerably to the L2 learners’ typical foreign accent
(Bannert 1980, Van Heuren and De Vries 1981). Considering the large
number of immigrant workers in Sweden, an investigation of the native
acquisition versus the learning and teaching of tone accents and other
prosodic features is a valuable inquiry, both from a linguistic and
pedagogical point of view.

Tone Accents in Swedish

The tone accents (sometimes referred to as pitch accents) present in
 Schmid 187

Accent 1 Accent 2

(syllable boundary) (syllable boundary)

E.g. ‘anden ‘the duck’ E.g. ‘anden ‘the spirit’
Figure I . Schematized Fo contours for Accent 1 and Accent 2 in Cen-
tral Standard Swedish (adapted from Ghrding 1977).

Swedish and Norwegian are predictable on the basis of stress, morpheme

boundaries, and morpheme types (free, bound), and are manifested in
characteristic pitch patterns for every major dialect. In Swedish, there
are two types of tone accents, Accent 1 and Accent 2. Only words with
primary stress carry tone accents. The basic pattern of accent
distribution is shown in Figure 1 for Central Standard Swedish
(schematized Fo contours).
Both these nouns are stressed on the first syllable. The pitch pattern
found in Accent 1 words is manifested as rising-falling, with one peak at
the end of the stressed syllable. Accent 2 words have two peaks, one in
the stressed syllable and one in the following syllable. Monomorphemic
words always carry Accent 1.
In general, the presence of Accent 1 and Accent 2 is predictable by
morphophonological rules, although there are a fair number of lexical
exceptions. In this paper, I will only deal with word types in which the
accent distribution is morphologically predictable. I have investigated
the distribution of tone accents in the following word types.

Accent I words
1. Native, initially stressed nouns with monomorphemic stems, e.g.
bdll ‘ball’, bdllen ‘the ball’. The addition of the definite article -en
does not change the accent type.
188 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

2. Non-native, non-initially stressed words generally receive Accent 1 ,

e.g. banan ‘banana’.
3. Verbs ending in -er in the present tense always carry Accent 1 , e.g.
sliinger ‘throw(s)’.

Accent 2 types
Accent 2 words always have a post-stress syllable. In this context I am
considering initially stressed words with bisyllabic stems, and one case of
accent shift.
1 . Native nouns, e.g. flicka ‘girl’, nalle ‘teddy-bear’.
2. Verbs ending in the stem formative -a, e.g. bada ‘bathe’, bhdar
‘bathe(s).’
3. Accent shift takes place in the following case: Nouns with
monomorphemic stems take Accent 1 in the singular: boll, bollen,
but Accent 2 in the plural: bhllar. This is actually part of a more
general rule, namely that most inflectional and derivational suffixes
require Accent 2.
(For more on accent rules, see Bruce (1977) and Girding (1977).

Function of Tone Accents

Tone accent is phonologically distinctive, but only in about 350 word
pairs. Therefore, correct tone accent placement and choice is not crucial
as far as mutual intelligibility is concerned. There is a large number of
near-minimal pairs, however, in which accent distinction helps
differentiate words, e.g. stickar ‘knits’ vs. sticker ‘stings’. Several
investigators (Bruce 1977, Girding 1977, Ohman 1967, and Hadding-
Kock 1961) point out that Accent 2 mainly has the function of signalling
that a sequence of syllables belongs to the same word, e.g. in
compounds: mPllanmblen ‘snacks’ vs. mellan milen ‘between meals’.
Bruce (1977) showed that listeners base their choice of whether they are
hearing a compound or two words on the presence and nature of the
3 1 2 3 1
medial peak between the two main peaks, i.e. mEllan mAlen vs. mEll &I
4 0
mAlen (the medial peak is underlined).2 A stimulus without a medial
peak was clearly identified as a compound. It is to be expected that
compounds consisting of monosyllabic words, e.g. rdtkott ‘rat meat’ vs.
r&t kott ‘raw meat’ will also have the characteristic Accent 2 (two-
peaked) pitch contour, which differs from two Accent 1 peaks in
 Schmid 189

sequence in a characteristic way, thus helping listeners identify a

compound. Accent 2 also occurs in connection with a wide range of
adjectival and (plural) noun inflections. The functional load of Accent 2
as an identifier of compounds in a wide sense has been debated in the
literature, but Bruce’s experiments clearly show that pitch contours
function as compound markers. Accent 1, on the other hand, signals
stem-to-suffix relationships in the case of a limited number of
inflections, e.g. the definite singular noun suffixes -en and -et, and the
present tense ending -er.

Dialectal Differences
There are noticeable differences in accent realization in the various
Swedish dialects (Meyer cited in Girding 1977). In this paper I am only
concerned with the types found in Southern and Central Swedish
dialects. These two types are shown in Figure 2 in the form of
schematized Fo contours.
One of the two children I recorded spoke a Southern Swedish dialect,
which means that Accent 1 is manifested as a pitch peak early in the first

Accent 1 Accent 2

Southern Swedish one peak early in one peak late in

the first syllable the first syllable

Central Standard one peak late in two peaks; one in

Swedish the first syllable each syllable

Figure 2. Accent manifestation in two Swedish dialects. The figures

are taken from Gbrding (1977).
190 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

syllable, while Accent 2 has one peak late in the first syllable in the adult
model. The other child spoke Central Standard Swedish. Accent 1 is
realized as one peak late in the first syllable, while Accent 2 has two
peaks, one in each syllable.
It has been shown (Bruce 1977) that there is some interference between
word accents, sentence accents and terminal juncture. To hold these
interference factors constant, I chose stimuli that present the word in
question in focus, i.e. as having a sentence accent in addition to the word
accent, if spoken by an adult native speaker. This means that the Fo
contour will have more discernable peaks and will be easier to measure.
As far as very young children are concerned, we have to keep in mind
that there rarely seems to be a distinction between words in and out of
focus, i.e., all words are more or less in focus, since we are dealing with
very short MLUs. In my limited body of data, I detected only one
instance of a stimulus word said in and out of focus. For Southern
Swedish, the Fo contours differ slightly for Accent 2 words in focus, but
hardly for Accent 1 words. In Central Standard Swedish, the only
significant peaks of the whole utterance are found in the focused word.
Therefore, it is desirable to have informants utter words in focus. For a
better comparison of adults’ and children’s data, the adults’ utterances
were kept short (MLU = 3-4).

THE RELEVANCE OF OTHER PROSODIC FACTORS FOR

TONE ACCENT PLACEMENT

One important prerequisite for the mastering of correct accent

placement and accent type is the determination of the place of stress in a
word, because only utterances with a primary stress carry accents. With a
few exceptions Accent 2 is only possible if the primary stress is on the
first syllable of a polymorphemic word, and is followed by an unstressed
syllable. Accent 1 occurs on any stress location and in monomorphemic
words.
Stress patterns in Swedish are not uniformly predictable. Polysyllabic
words of Old Norse origin are usually stressed on the first syllable of the
root, and can take Accent 1 or Accent 2. Foreign words borrowed into
the language at different points in history have varying stress patterns,
and mostly carry Accent 1.
In the following section I shall describe the methodology employed to
determine the presence or absence of tone accents and other prosody
features in L1 and L2 learners’ speech samples.
 Schmid 191

METHODOLOGY
INFORMANTS AND SETTING

For the purpose of a comparative data analysis of the production of

tone accent in Swedish, I recorded two children as first language learners
and twelve American college students as second language learners.

The children
The monolingual Swedish children were recorded in monthly sessions
for seven months, excluding two trial sessions. At the beginning of the
study, Petter, was 1;11 and Cecilia, the girl, was 1;6. Both children came
from middle-class Swedish speaking homes in the environment of
Boston. English was rarely spoken at home, in spite of the presence of
older siblings who went to American pre-schools. Although the children
were exposed to English in that they watched “Sesame Street” and came
into contact with English-speaking friends of their siblings and parents,
they were not themselves using English as a means of communication.
The parents of both children had adopted the strategy that all members
must speak the home language at home at all times. The result was that
the younger children were not competent in English, and they did not
mix languages, since they had only one language (unlike the case of
Hildegard (Leopold 1970), who is said to have had a mixed system till the
end of her second year). The onset of bilingualism for the children in
these families appears to have been the entrance to pre-school. The
children I interviewed had not entered pre-school at the time of
investigation. I consider the influence of English on their acquisition of
Swedish intonation minimal, if not non-existent. This is also evidenced
by the fact that the children followed the developmental stages shown by
monolingual Swedish children (cf. Bergman 1976). Whatever the nature
of the linguistic knowledge of these Swedish children living in an English-
speaking community, the results clearly indicate that the presence of
English did not interfere with these children’s acquisition of intonation.
The recording sessions were held in the homes of the children. Both the
interviewer and the caretaker interacted with the children and siblings
rarely were present.
Each session had a formal and an informal part. Upon my arrival we
would play together in an informal way, with the tape recorder on. I used
a set of pictures symbolizing everyday words which the children had to
name. In evaluating the data, the controlled stimuli and the words
192 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

mentioned in spontaneous play were first evaluated separately. As the

achievements in the two situations did not differ, the data were not
separated in further evaluations.

Adult informants
Twelve college students at Brown University (L1 : American English)
with no previous exposure to formally taught Swedish were observed
over a period of eight months. The students were attending a two-
semester course in beginning Swedish. The class met for four hours a
week and the students were taught Central Standard Swedish. Swedish
grammar contains no inherent difficulty for American students but
pronunciation, in the most general sense, needs additional attention.
Some emphasis was placed on the teaching of prosodic features. The
students were recorded twice during the school year, once after four
months of exposure and once after eight months. The setting for these
recordings was the language lab of the university. In order to familiarize
students with the recording situation, I met with the students for
individual sessions on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, it is possible that
the students would have performed better in a “real-life” situation
(“interviewers paradox”, Labov 1972). The students’ limited knowledge
of Swedish did not permit me, however, to test more extensive
knowledge. The two interviews consisted of different parts with varying
degrees of formality (a reading task, a picture-naming task (same picture
which was used for the children)) and free speech (dialogue/picture
description). A total of 19 target words were uttered twice by each
student in the course of the interview.

ANALYSIS OF STIMULI

The sessions with the children were recorded on a Sony reel-to-reel

tape recorder (TC 800 B) at 7.5 inches per second. The adult and
childrens’ data were analyzed both auditorily and acoustically. As
established by Hadding-Kock (1961), Meyer (1937) and many others
subsequently, tone accents can easily be perceived by a trained listener.
The location of the peak within the stressed vowel and the resulting
direction of the tonal curve seemed to decide which word tone was heard.
A stressed syllable with a predominating fall is perceived as Accent 1 and
a syllable with a predominating rise is heard as Accent 2 (Hadding-Kock
1961:64). This statement is relevant for perception. Hadding-Kock used
speakers and listeners of several major dialects and found no difference
 Schmid 193

in performance, neither inter- nor intra-dialectally. Other investigators

(references in Girding 1977) have reported slightly better performances
for judging one’s own dialect, especially if the tone curves had been
manipulated. My native dialect is Southern Swedish, but like many
southern Swedes, I am bidialectal (due to a certain stigmatization of the
southern dialect).
For more precision, I decided to submit my entire corpus to
spectrographic analysis. Narrowband spectrograms at 500 Hz per inch
were made of each item on a Key Sonagraph 6061B. A scale magnifier
(300 Hz) was used. The fifth harmonic was measured and the resulting
frequency was divided by five to render the fundamental. For each curve,
time and frequency were measured by hand at the maxima and the
minima. The timing of each of the major turning points, i.e. starting and
end points of rises and falls connecting the maxima and minima was
determined in terms of the nearest CV boundary, if possible. Frequency
contours were also measured at the beginning and at the end of each
phoneme, as far as discernible. From these values the mean frequency
was calculated and the departure of a maximum peak from the mean was
determined. In order to qualify as a tone accent peak, the departure had
to be within a certain range. Each utterance was thus measured against
itself. The mean Fo was calculated in order to control for extreme values
for peaks and Fo drops that sometimes occurred in the children’s speech.
Measurable peaks were audible as well. This procedure was followed for
a small sample of the entire corpus of about 600 spectrograms for adults
and children. It became clear that in order to qualify as a tone accent the
maxima and minima formed a characteristic contour for the tone
accents, which was possible to determine without precise measurements
for each utterance. The remaining stimuli were then estimated by eye and
subsequent samples justified this methodology. An utterance was thus
classified as having Accent 1, Accent 2, or no discernable peak in the
frequency contour.
Both monosyllabic and polysyllabic words were analyzed.
Monosyllabic words always have Accent 1, and the correct intonation
was used by both students and children. Therefore, monosyllables are
not included in the following analysis.
The acoustic correlates of stress, intensity and duration, were not
explicitly measured because it has been found that the timing of the Fo-
fall in connection with the stressed syllable- as expressed by the timing
of the mid-point of the fall - is decisive for the identification of the word
194 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

accents, but the gradient of the fall turns out to irrelevant (Bruce
1977:120).
Tone accents are thus mainly identified by the tonal curve. The highest
peak is the stress, and intensity measurements are not necessary to
determine the presence of tone accents, at least not in the case of
Swedish. (For Lithuanian, it has been reported that intonational
differences are irrelevant and that only intensity, and sometimes length
matters (Robinson 1968)).
One factor that influenced the spectrographic quality was the choice of
stimuli. Ideally, stimuli used in a study of tone accents should have the
following segmental composition in order to produce maximally usable
spectrograms :
1 . Words should contain sonorant consonants in order to produce
continuous, fairly undisturbed Fo contours. Voiceless obstruents
have a raising effect on the following vowel, while voiced obstruents
have a lowering effect on the Fo contour (Lofquist 1975).
2. Stimuli should contain vowels with approximately the same degree
of opening. It has been shown that the intrinsic Fo contour can
differ as much as 20-30 Hz between high and low vowels. Bruce
(1 977) recommends non-high vowels for minimal disturbances.
Originally, I had made up a corpus of stimuli that mainly consisted of
sonorant consonants and non-high vowels. However, in the trial sessions
with the children, it became apparent that only a fraction of these words
were part of such young children? vocabulary. (The sentences Bruce
(1977) uses in his study also show the high degree of unnaturalness one
has to accept in order to use perfectly analyzable stimuli.) I thus had to
abandon the principle of maximum analyzability and settle for words
that the children were familiar with. In the process of the analysis I
considered all the stimuli, and calculated the standard deviation from the
standard contours for Accent 1 and Accent 2 which I had previously
established for all stimuli containing high vowels and vowels preceded by
obstruents. Considering the possible 20-30 Hz difference (Bruce 1977)
between high and low vowels, the FO’Sof the stimuli containing high
vowels still showed a significant standard deviation from the mean Fo, so
I kept the stimuli in the corpus. Utterances with question contours were
not analyzed.
In concluding this section on methodology, I would like to stress that
spectrographic analysis was used in this context to confirm the presence
or absence of tone accents in addition to the auditory analysis. In the
 Schmid 195

context of this study I was not attempting to investigate the acoustic

manifestation of tone accents in any deeper, theoretical sense.

RESULTS
CHILDREN’S DATA ANALYSIS

Children’s acquisition of stress

Investigators at the University of Lund (Tilly, Ullner and Widelov
1981) found that children first acquire initially stressed words. Using
words with non-initial stress patterns, young children (1 :10-2:3) are
likely to drop the unstressed syllable. At the age of 2:6, the basic stress
distribution rules seem to have been mastered by Swedish children, at
least as far as their active vocabulary is concerned.
The children in this study rarely made mistakes in stress placement,
although the unstressed syllable was sometimes omitted in trochaically
stressed words. This is in agreement with studies of English first language
acquisition as well (Allen and Hawkins 1980). As shown in Table 1,
incorrect stress placement occurred mostly in Accent 1 words, that is, in
finally stressed words.
It is noticeable that when non-initially stressed words (which should
take Accent 1) were incorrectly stressed on the first syllable, both

Table I
Children’s assignment of stress

Cecilia (1;7-2;O) Petter (2;O-2;5)

Correct Incorrect Percent Correct Incorrect Percent
stress stress correct N stress stress correct N
Targets
Finally
stressed
Acc 1 words 13 4 73 17 17 4

Initially
stressed
Acc 2 words 93 1
Initially
stressed
Acc 1 words 42 0 16
196 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

children used Accent 2 in four out of seven cases. Accent 2 would be

appropriate, if these words were initially stressed. There were three cases
of reduction in which only the stressed syllable was rendered.
In finally stressed nouns (Accent I), Cecilia does not appear to be
using any consistent pattern of accent distribution in finally stressed
nouns. Petter, on the other hand, assigns stress correctly and uses Accent
1 in a fairly consistent manner. In his utterances there are also fewer
occurrences of wrong stress assignment. It is particularly noticeable that
there is only one occurrence of wrong stress assignment in Accent 2
words in Petter’s corpus. This child does not seem to mistake accent for
stress which is reportedly done by adult learners of Swedish (Girding
1977). Out of a total number of 327 utterances for both children, there
were only eleven occurrences of wrong stress placement, so we can safely
conclude that these children have mastered initial stress patterns. Non-
initial stress patterns have not yet been fully acquired. If the children
incorrectly stressed finally stressed words on the first syllable, they often
used Accent 2, which is consistent with their general rule of accent
distribution (see below).

Children’s acquisition of tone accents

My results confirmed the tendencies reported in the literature. Only
two studies of children’s acquisition of tone accents have previously been
undertaken, one of which was a comparative study of adults’ and
children’s acquisition of tone accents (Johansson 1973). None of the
previous data were submitted to instrumental analysis. It is reported that
young children overgeneralize the use of Accent 2 up to the age of five,
while adults overapply Accent 1 . The results of the auditory and
instrumental analyses of the children’s pitch patterns are displayed in
Table 2 (a and b).
In polysyllabic, initially stressed words both Accent 1 and Accent 2 are
possible. A clear production pattern emerges (Table 2c).
Cecilia used initially stressed Accent 1 words (with monomorphemic
stems or -er-verbs) in 42 cases, but the correct accent was only used in 7
cases (16.6 percent). Petter used initially stressed Accent 1 words in 16
cases and used the correct Accent 1 in 2 cases (12.5 percent). Accent 2
words (polysyllabic stems and -a and -ar verbs) were correctly used by
Cecilia in 60.6 percent of the total number of utterances of Accent 2
words. Petter used Accent 2 in 62 percent of the 92 cases. The differences
between the two children can be attributed to their age differences and
 Schmid 197

Table 2.a.
Children's acquisition of tone accents in Swedish.
Cecilia (1;7-2;O).

Word type Stimuli Accent 1 Accent 2 indet. no peak To correct N

la 16 4 *22 4 0 13.3 30
lb 10 3 * 9 0 0 25.0 12
lc 9 4 * 51 2 61 23.5 17
2a 26 '7 301 9 14 50.0 60
2b 15 0 21 0 6 77.5 27
2c 6 *1 6 0 0 85.5 7
Total 153

Table 2. b.
Children's acquisition of tone accents in Swedish
Petter (2;O-2;5)

Word type Stimuli Accent 1 Accent 2 indet. no peak To correct N

la 16 0 * I 0 0 0 1
lb 10 2 *13 0 0 13.3 15
lc 9 14 * 2' 0 41 66.7 21
2a 26 * 2 732 0 17 79.4 92
2b 15 0 30 0 3 90.1 33
2c 6 * 3 63 0 3 50.0 12
Total 174
Word types: 1 =Accent 1. (a) initially stressed Ns (bdll, bdllen); (b) initially stressed Vs
(sfdnger); (c) non-initially stressed Ns (banun). 2 =Accent 2. (a) initially stressed Ns
cflicka); (b) initially stressed Vs (bada(r));(c) Accent shift (bdllar).
Notes: 'denotes incorrect accent assignment. N is the total number of analyzable utter-
ances. 1two instances of incorrect stress; *one instance,of incorrect stress; 30ne instance of
imitation.

Table 2.c.
Percentage of correct peak occurrence and overgeneralization
in the children's utterances

Cecilia Petter
~

Correct Accent 1 16.6 12.5

Overgeneralized Accent 2 73.8 87.5
Correct Accent 2 60.6 62.5
Overgeneralized Accent 1 8.5 3.6
198 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

possibly to the different dialectal manifestations of accent tonality. In

Southern Swedish dialects, both accent types are manifested by a peak in
the first syllable. Accent 1 words show an early peak, Accent 2 shows a
late peak in the first syllable. In several words uttered by Cecilia, the
peak was located midway between the Accent 1 and Accent 2 peak
locations of the adult model (found under ‘indet(erminate)’ in Table 2).
With such similar patterns of tone accent manifestation, a child learning
this dialect may go through a longer period of exploration than when
learning a dialect like Central Standard Swedish, in which the two accent
types are clearly differing in manifestation.
One word of caution should be said here with regard to the data base.
Table 2 indicates that the children used Accent 2 words in abundance,
whereas the corresponding number for Accent 1 words is rather small.
This does not reflect the actual frequency of these word types in the
language (and in the vocabulary the children are exposed to), although
most so called nursery words are bisyllabic in Swedish (Vbvve ‘doggie’).
Had I listed all the monosyllabic Accent 1 words the children used in the
course of the study, the picture would be more balanced. Accent 1 words
were consistently used with the correct pitch patterns, even in Cecilia’s
case. This finding was expected and is consistent with Lieberman’s
hypothesis concerning the ‘innate referential breath-group’ (see below).
The results of the analysis of the children’s data can be summarized as
follows:
1. The two-year olds made few stress mistakes.
2. The use of Accent 2 was overgeneralized to most bisyllabic words.
3. With regard to children, stress and accent mistakes are related, in
that finally stressed words that receive initial stress receive Accent 2.

Adults’ Data Analysis

In the following section, I shall present the analysis of the data
collected in January, after four months of exposure to Swedish, and in
May, after eight months’ exposure to Swedish.

Acquisition of stress
Only the January data are presented here, since the May data were
almost identical. The results are shown in Table 3.
The table shows that the students placed stress correctly in all but one
instance of initially stressed words (99.5 percent). Some mistakes
occurred in non-initially stressed words (banhen, upelsinen). There was
 Schnid 199

Tabe 3
Acquisition of stress bjadult learners (N= 12)

initially stressed finally stressed

Number of analyzable utterances 194 23

To correct stress used 99.5 61

only one instance in which Accent 2words received additional stress on

the second syllable, although it his been reported that L2 learners
perceive Accent 2 as an additional stress and then produce the word
according to their perception (Girdng 1977).
From these data, we can thus predct that if the students were to make
mistakes in using tone accents, tiese would not be due to stress
misplacement.

ACQUISITION OF TONE ACCENTS BY B U L T LEARNERS

OF SWEDISH

In the first recording session in Jaiuary, only one case of Accent 2 use
occurred; jult&nten ‘Santa C l a d utered by student A. It is generally
found in the literature (Girding 197, Bannert 1980, Johansson 1973)
that foreigners overgeneralize Acceit 1 and use it in all polysyllabics.
This hypothesis does not hold truc for all the adults in this study.
Instead, three students had either nc peaks at all in their utterances, or
the peaks were too insignificant tc be considered tone accents. Six
students had some form of Accent lin all polysyllabic words, and three
students used mixed strategies.
For this early stage of learning !wedish as a second language, the
students are divided into two major goups: one group used no change of
pitch at all (i.e. had no peaks in the To contour at all), whereas students
of the other group used some form ojAccent 1. Three students used both
forms randomly. We can only speculite as to what the students with flat
intonation contours were doing. I stlongly suspect that they would have
sounded similar, had they spoken English, i.e. these students were
speaking with rather flat intonatior contours in English, and did not
change their manner of speaking in Swedish.
200 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

Table 4
Acquisition of tone accents by two adult learners of Swedish

Student A
January May
Accent 1 stimuli 1 1
Analyzable utterances 5 6
Correct Accent 4 1
Incorrect Accent 0 5
No peak 1 0
Student B
January May
1 1
1 1
6 5
0 0
1 2

Accent 2 stimuli 11 11 11 11
Analyzable stimuli 11 10 11 10
Correct Accent 2 0 5 0 2
Incorrect Accent 9 2 11 8
No peak 2 3 0 0

The May Session

In the second recording session the picture had not changed much for
the majority of the students. Accent 2 still does not appear in the data.
Most students use some form of Accent 1 or have no peaks in their
utterances. However, two students have started using some form of
Accent 2. The results for these two students during both sessions are
shown in Table 4.
The May data of student A show an overgeneralization of Accent 2 for
all bisyllabics. He uses Accent 2 correctly in five cases and incorrectly in
five cases. The latter are, as in the children’s data, inflected
monomorphemic nouns (e.g. bollen) and er-verbs, which both should
take Accent 1.
Student B uses an entirely different approach. In his January data, we
find perfect Accent 1 contours in all verbs. That means that Accent 1 is
incorrectly used in the case of the -ar-verbs. Four months later, this
student is using Accent 2 in some bisyllabic plural nouns (hundar ‘dogs,
bollar ‘balls’). He has also started using Accent 2 for the verbs. As for
plurals, Accent 1 is still incorrectly used in three cases.
The data from the two major recording sessions with adult American
L2 learners of Swedish indicate that most L2 learners observed in this
study did not acquire Swedish accent tonality. Instead, Accent 1 or no
peaks in the Fo contour prevailed. Two students behaved in an
 Schmid 201

exceptional way. During the second major session, one student showed
an overgeneralization of Accent 2. The other is still overgeneralizing
Accent 1, but uses Accent 2 in two utterances.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

Children’s and adults’ results can be summarized as follows: there is a

tendency for young children to overgeneralize the use of Accent 2 to all
polysyllabic words, even to those that have monomorphemic stems and
require Accent 1. Adult learners of Swedish (speakers of American
English in this case) overgeneralize Accent 1 to all words or produce Fo
contours without significant peaks. In the following section these
findings will be discussed in light of possible child and adult language
acquisition strategies.

DISCUSSION

The data presented in the preceding section indicate that both L1 and
L2 learners have problems with accent distinction. Other investigators
who have studied older children and more advanced L2 learners found
that both groups acquire tone accents relatively late. Children have
acquired accent distinction by around the age of four. For adults there
are no precise data. Johansson (1973) reports on British speakers who
had resided in Sweden for over ten years. Accent 2 words were only
mastered in 40 percent of the total cases across all speakers. This
phenomenon has been observed over and over again in Swedish as a
second language classes (Bannert 1980).
My data indicate that children and adults (at least speakers of
American English) show completely opposite patterns of tone accent
acquisition in the beginning stages: roughly, children use Accent 2 on all
polysyllables, while adults use Accent 1 most of the time. This leads us t o
the more general question of tone accent acquisition strategy. Which
strategy do children use? Is this comparable to what adults are doing?
Neither adults nor children made any significant number of stress
placement mistakes. This suggests that the problem is inherent in the
tone accent phenomenon itself and not related to stress misplacement.
202 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

CHILDREN’S STRATEGIES

If children incorrectly stressed a non-initially stressed word (which

should take Accent 1) on the first syllable, they often assigned Accent 2
to this word. This suggests that children at this early age are operating
with the rule that all polysyllabics require Accent 2. This strategy works
well up to a certain stage of their development, namely until they start
acquiring inflections. Until then, the majority of polysyllabics that the
children used required Accent 2, and they hardly used inflected forms of
the type bz7en ‘the car’. Cecilia started using inflected nouns at around
1 : l l . Petter started using a few of these forms at the termination of the
investigation. The function of inflected forms is not yet clear to the
children at this stage. This is attested by the use of forms like en fi7ten ‘a
blanket-the’, i.e. the occurrence of double articles (Cecilia 2:O). Up to
now, the child had no reason to use anything but Accent 2 in
polysyllabics, because bisyllabic words with inflections requiring
Accent 1 were hardly present in their corpus. With the introduction of
inflected forms requiring Accent 1 or Accent 2, a stage of confusion
follows. This is attested in other studies, and to a certain degree in my
data.
Historically, there are parallels to be observed here. Monosyllabic
words of the post-syncopation period of Old Norse have Accent 1 (or
stdd in Danish) in all Scandinavian dialects, while polysyllables of that
period carry Accent 2/no stdd (Girding 1977: 17). Monosyllables that are
monomorphemic (e.g. hund ‘dog’) and polysyllables that are
polymorphemic are those wordgroups children have no problems with.
Before 1200, the postposed definite article had undergone suffixation.
Between 1200 and 1400 svarabhakti vowels were inserted between a
consonant and a wordfinal /r/, A/, or /n/. This resulted in new
categories of polysyllabic words that retained prosodic characteristics of
monosyllables, i.e. Accent 1 (Girding 1977: 18). The learner can only
obtain knowledge about this latter category once inflections are used,
e.g. vitten ‘water’ looks like a polysyllabic word, but the definite form is
vuttnet, which shows that the stem is vattn-. Furthermore, the learner
may be confused by compounds that behave differently in different
dialects, as well as within dialects. Not all compounds take the expected
Accent 2. Late loanwords that have not been integrated into the native
accent patterns further complicate the learning process. In sum, the
 Schmid 203

children’s acquisition of tone accents could take place in the following

stages:
Stage I: All initially stressed polysyllabic words receive Accent 2. (Rule 1)
Stage 11: Inflected forms increasingly enter the active vocabulary of the
children. Inflected monomorphemic words mostly receive Accent 2, in
accordance with Rule 1. Compounds presumably receive Accent 2.
Stage 111: Gradual adjustment of Rule 1. Initially stressed bisyllables
receive Accent 2 and inflected monomorphemic stems receive Accent 1
(Rule 2).
Stage IV: Further adjustment of rules for plural nouns ending in -ar
(Accent shift takes place, from Accent 1 in the singular to Accent 2 in the
plural), compounds, loanwords. The latter two groups will have to be
learned word by word, depending on the dialect.

In conclusion, children first use a general phonological rule operating

across word classes. This rule is conditioned by syllable structure. Mono-
syllabic words take Accent 1 and polysyllabic words take Accent 2. For a
child who has not yet acquired individual segments and morphemes, the
syllable division is apparently most natural. When children start acquir-
ing inflections, they discover different morpheme structures and eventu-
ally the accent distribution rules that accompany them. As a last resort,
they will use a memorization strategy for individual irregular forms.
There are also perceptual factors that may influence the acquisition of
tone accents. When comparing the data from the two children, it is
obvious that Petter’s acquisition of tone accents was more categorical.
Almost all bisyllabic words had Accent 2. Cecilia’s data showed more
variation. Here Accent 1 was also found (though rarely) in words that
have Accent 2 in the adult model. As noted above, this difference could
be due to dialectal differences in accent manifestation.

ADULTSTRATEGIES

Contrastive Analysis
When an adult learns a second language, his situation is very different
from that of the child. An important factor that influences the adult
204 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

learner is that he already has learnt one language. The comparison of L1

and L2 when teaching a foreign language was the prevailing approach to
foreign language teaching in the 1950s and 1960s (Contrastive Analysis,
Lado 1957). Lado (1957) predicted that “Those elements that are similar
to his [the foreign language learner’s] native language will be easy for him
and those elements that are different will be difficult” (1957:2).
Subsequently, this strong claim has been modified. Eckmann (1977)
proposes a Markedness Differential Hypothesis that incorporates ‘a
relative degree of difficulty’ into the Contrastive Analysis. This notion of
difficulty must be independent of any given language (i.e. must be
universal), and must be valid on grounds that are independent of the
facts surrounding second language acquisition. Thus, we shall propose
that the notion of “degree of difficulty” corresponds to the notion of
“typologically marked” (Eckman 1977:320). His definition of
markedness is: “A phenomenon A in some language is more marked than
B if the presence of A in a language implies the presence of B, but the
presence of B does not imply the presence of A” (1977:320). The
Markedness Differential Hypothesis is proposed to be: The areas of
difficulty that a language learner will have can be predicted on the basis
of a systematic comparison of the grammars of the native language, the
target language, and the markedness relations stated in universal
grammar, such that:
(a) those areas of the target language that differ from the native language
and are more marked than the native language will be difficult
(b) those areas of the target language that are different from the native
language but are not more marked than the native language will not be
difficult . (1977:321).
Accent 2 is generally regarded as marked. In the following section, we
shall examine the criteria upon which that classification is based.

Markedness criteria for tone accents in Swedish

A number of generative models have been proposed for the production
of word and sentence intonation in Swedish (Ohman 1967, Girding
1970, 1977, Bruce 1977). The important claim made by Girding and
Bruce is that dialect differences can be thought of as differences in timing
with respect to the pitch peaks (e.g. a long rise in the Stockholm dialect
and a long fall in Southern Swedish). There is a stable relationship
between the two accents in all dialects that is independent of accent type.
Whatever the shape of the pitch curve for Accent 1 , the latter part of the
 Schmid 205

corresponding Accent 2 is similar to it. “This regularity (can be)

expressed an an informal recipe for the synthesis of Accent 2. . .Squeeze
(Accent 1) into the latter part of the Accent 2 word. Then extrapolate the
curve to the earlier part of the word. A natural interpretation of the
similarity in the two accents is that it represents the laryngeal response to
sentence prosody which of course must be shared by both accents”
(Girding 1977233).
According to Girding, word accents have the following components:
Accent 1 carries the peak contour of the sentence intonation (e.g. a
dominant rise in Central Standard Swedish). Accent 2 consists of a
precontour that has the opposite direction of the sentence contour (i.e.
falling in Central Standard Swedish) plus the Accent 1 contour. Accent 2
in all dialects thus can be derived from the sentence prosody. In addition
to that, information is needed concerning stress, syllable structure and
whether or not Accent 2 is present.
The acquisitional pattern of student B, presented in the previous
section, is consistent with the model proposed by Girding (1970). It was
shown that once Accent 1 had been acquired in its full form, this student
was more successful in producing Accent 2. (This does not mean that the
student uses Accent 2 in the appropriate places, of course.) In order to
acquire Accent 1 completely, knowledge about sentence intonation in
Swedish is needed. Swedish sentence intonation in statements can be
described as a 2 3 1 contour, followed by terminal juncture (Hadding-
Kock 1961). The corresponding contour for American English is
approximately the same (e.g. Pike 1945, quoted in Lieberman 1967).
This will thus, according to the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, not be
the critical aspect for American students learning Swedish. The problem
for the English speaker will be the production of Accent 2 words, which
are manifested by adding the basic 2 3 1 contour on to a falling
precontour which receives primary stress. The second syllable only
receives secondary stress. This fits the description of markedness as given
by Eckman (1977, above). Accent 2 implies the presence of Accent 1
(basic sentence intonation pattern), while the presence of Accent 1 does
not imply the presence of Accent 2. In fact, Accent 2 constitutes “an area
of the target language which differs from the native language and is more
marked” (Eckman 1977:321). We are to expect interference, and this is
what my results show. Most students use some form of Accent 1, but
rarely Accent 2. Or, in other words, the production of the intonation
contour of Accent 2 is markedly different from the “archetypal normal
206 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

breathgroup” (Lieberman 1967) of speakers of American English and

therefore it is ‘unnatural’ to them. “Individual languages are undoubtedly
characterized by specific coordinated patterns of activity involving the
laryngeal and chest muscles in the production of ‘typical’ breathgroups.
In American English, for example. . .the fundamental frequency of the
vibrating cord appears to be a function of the subglottal air pressure and
rises from a medium to a higher pitch at the stress peak. . .and then falls
at the end of the utterance’’ (Lieberman 1967:27).
Accent 2 is thus marked from a second language learner’s point of
view, and from an overall production point of view. But is it universally
marked? Yes and no. Among the Indo-European and Uralic languages in
geographic proximity, accent tonality is not a wide-spread phenomenon.
Some forms of tone accents have been reported for Lithuanian, Latvian,
Swedish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croatian, and possibly Estonian. Danish
and Livonian have the laryngeal feature stdd (see Lehiste 1978 for
references). This limited occurrence in its own language group would
probably classify the tone accent as marked. Among the languages of the
world, however, accent tonality occurs in a number of African, Asian,
and American Indian languages, so from a universal frequency point of
view, it is not a marked phenomenon. The original Prague School notion
of markedness (Trubetskoy 1958) centers around the neutralization of
phonemes. In German, for example, I t / and /d/ are neutralized as [t] in
word-final position, and thus, /d/ is considered more marked than /t/ in
German. Other criteria for markedness have been the following (Hyman
1975 :145):
(a) The addition of a feature: In the case of Swedish, the Accent 2 tone
curve High-Low-High can be thought of as an addition, in comparison
with the tone curve of Accent 1 which is High-Low (cf. above).
(b) Frequency: An unmarked feature occurs more frequently than a
marked one. With regard to the overall presence of tone accents in
Swedish dialects, Accent 2 is more marked, because there are dialects
that lack it entirely (e.g. the Finish-Swedish dialect spoken in Helsinki;
Selenius 1978).
(c) Neutrality: Unmarked elements tend to favor neutralization more
than marked elements. Thus, epenthetic vowels are often thought of as
unmarked. In prosody, this can be likened to syllable reduction. In
Swedish, the high pitched post-stress syllable of an Accent 2 word is not
subject to reduction in fast speech, while the low pitched post-stress
syllable in Accent 1 words may be reduced.
 Schmid 207

(d) Productivity: Unmarked phenomena are often considered

productive. If new bisyllabic words are borrowed into Swedish, one
would expect them to receive Accent 1. This is often the case, but there
are exceptions, e.g. radar ‘radar’.
(e) Production: As mentioned above, the production of Accent 2 is
contrary to the ‘archetypal normal breath-group’. The laryngeal tension
is increased ‘to counter the falling subglottal air pressure’. Normally,
‘when the subglottal air pressure falls, the Fo of phonation will also fall’,
resulting in a falling sentence contour (Lieberman 1967:26). In producing
Accent 2 words, the contour rises when we expect it to fall. So, from a
physiological point, Accent 2 is more marked than Accent 1.
(0 Child Language Acquisition (Jakobson 1968): Linguistic features that
are marked are usually acquired later than features that are less marked.
Accent 2 is acquired early, however, presenting us with a potential
markedness dilemma. The children observed in this study already
produced both accents, so we do not know in which order, if in any order
at all, tone accents are acquired. We d o know, however, that although
young children can produce Accent 2, they overgeneralize its use to all
polysyllabic, initially stressed words. What makes Accent 2 marked for
children is thus its lexically and morphologically determined occurrence,
for which the rules have t o be acquired possibly in the stages suggested
above.
Most adult second language learners appear to have problems with the
production of Accent 2 because it is marked in view of the intonation
contours in their first language. In addition to that, they have to learn the
rules of distribution.
The arguments presented above all fit the description of the
Markedness Differential Hypothesis as given by Eckman (1977, above).
Strictly speaking, however, the acquisitional difficulties of adult learners
of Swedish with respect to Accent 2 can also be accounted for by the
Constrastive Analysis Hypothesis (Lado 1957) without invoking
markedness. Accent 2 is a feature in the target language, which differs
from the pitch pattern in the first language. This leads me to the
following two conclusions.
(1) In view of my data, it is impossible to test a hypothesis like the
Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH). Nothing in my data
points t o the fact that Accent 2 is not produced by adult learners
because it is more marked. The presence of contrasting intonation
contours in Swedish (L2) simply presents a difference. It may not be
208 Language Learning Vol. 36, No. 2

of importance that Accent 2 is a marked phenomenon. The idea of

the MDH is intuitively appealing, although evidence for it cannot be
found in the case of the acquisition of Accent 2. Possible evidence
for MDH would be problems in the acquisition of an unmarked
feature by L2 learners.
(2) The classical markedness criterion concerning the acquisition of a
feature by children does not adequately account for a prosodic
feature like Accent 2. For intonational phenomena, other criteria
could be involved. Children imitate intonation contours before they
produce segments correctly. I suggest that the markedness of a
prosodic feature like tone accent cannot be judged on the basis of
children’s performance. The observation that children perform well
on most intonational tasks does not account for the fact that Accent
2 is marked for adult second language learners.
(3) In view of all other markedness criteria, it can be concluded that
Accent 2 is a marked phenomenon.
(4) Children and adults demonstrate completely opposite production
patterns, as far as word intonation in Swedish is concerned.
Children use a syllabic rule and overgeneralize one accent pattern.
Adults use their L1 intonation contours in L2 utterances.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

In view of my hypothesis that the Accent 2 pitch pattern is highly

marked and therefore difficult to produce for speakers of American
English, it is justifiable to ask whether an effort to teach accent tonality
in the classroom should be made at all. My answer is yes. Accent tonality
is an inherent part of the intonational system of Swedish, and, in
addition to this, has a certain function in signalling stem-inflection
relationships (Accent 1) and compound relationships (Accent 2). There is
no concrete evidence from neurolinguistic studies that the adult learner
must perform worse in the area of phonology and suprasegmentals than
the child or adolescent. There are other factors that may prove a
hinderance to the adult L2 learners, such as the general motivation for
learning a language. Burling (1981) convincingly demonstrated that there
are social factors that influence the adult’s performance in L2. The
average adult L2 learner in the classroom wants to learn as much as
possible as quickly as possible to accommodate his sophisticated
communication needs. The adult thus feels pressured to be able to utter
 Schmid 209

complex and meaningful sentences in a short time to decrease the gap

between his L1 and L2 competence. Children learning a second language
have other social factors influencing them, mainly peer pressure. Their
main concern is first, to sound like the other children and then the
content is added (Wong-Fillmore 1979).
But is it necessary to sound native? Yes, it is. It has been demonstrated
(Bannert 1980, Van Heuren and De Vries 1981) that phonological factors
play an important role in the perception of native speakers. Native-like
intonation thus serves a double purpose: (1) It increases the native
speaker's level of comprehension and thus insures continued
communication. (2) The foreigner is not marked by a foreign accent,
which simplifies his daily life.
Can we learn anything from the way children acquire tone accents?
Yes. It is reasonable to assume that both children and adults are in search
of rules or generalizations when acquiring a language. As far as tone
accents are concerned, children have found a general pattern:
polysyllables take Accent 2. This is a general rule that could be taught to
adults. Later, modifications have to be made for monomorphemic
words, and cases of accent shift. This will presumably be a trivial task in
comparison with the acquisition of Accent 2 itself. The pitch pattern of
Accent 2, finally, can only be acquired through continued training.

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