The production and perception of L1 and L2 Dutch stress

This study aims at exploring the production and perception of Dutch word stress by Francophone learners of (Belgian) Dutch. For this purpose a production experiment was first carried out. In line with other studies, it was hypothesized that participants would show a tendency to stress the final syllable. Even though this hypothesis was confirmed, there was also a substantial lack of agreement between the five labellers who perceptually annotated the data for stress position. To further investigate this matter, acoustic measures were extracted. The data suggest that both groups of speakers do not use acoustic correlates to signal prominence in the same way, the Dutch group using intensity, vocalic nucleus duration and pitch movement more, while the French group prefers duration and pitch movement. This study also led us to develop tools to phonetise, syllabify and facilitate the acoustic analysis of Dutch speech.