This paper reports two series of experiments that examined the phonetic correlates of lexical stress in Vietnamese compounds in comparison to their phrasal constructions. In the first series of experiments, acoustic and perceptual characteristics of Vietnamese compound words and their phrasal counterparts were investigated on five likely acoustic correlates of stress or prominence ͑f0 range and contour, duration, intensity and spectral slope, vowel reduction͒, elicited under two distinct speaking conditions: a "normal speaking" condition and a "maximum contrast" condition which encouraged speakers to employ prosodic strategies for disambiguation. The results suggested that Vietnamese lacks phonetic resources for distinguishing compounds from phrases lexically and that native speakers may employ a phrase-level prosodic disambiguation strategy ͑juncture marking͒, when required to do so. However, in a second series of experiments, minimal pairs of bisyllabic coordinative compounds with reversible syllable positions were examined for acoustic evidence of asymmetrical prominence relations. Clear evidence of asymmetric prominences in coordinative compounds was found, supporting independent results obtained from an analysis of reduplicative compounds and tone sandhi in Vietnamese ͓Nguyễn and Ingram, 2006͔. A reconciliation of these apparently conflicting findings on word stress in Vietnamese is presented and discussed.

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This paper reports an acoustic study that examined the tonal features of Vietnamese language used by the Vietnamese community in Australia. The target of this examination is the comparative analysis of the phonetic characteristics of tones produced by Vietnamese in Australia and in Vietnam. Tones produced by young (n=10) and older (n=10) Vietnamese Australians residing in Brisbane, Australia, were acoustically examined and compared with those produced by corresponding young (n=10) and older (n=10) Vietnamese residing in either Ho Chi Minh City or Can Tho City, Vietnam. The results showed that the main patterns of mispronunciation of tones by the young Vietnamese in Australia (YVA) include (i) confusing tones that are in the same registers or/and have similar characteristics, (ii) the tendency to pronounce complicated tones as simple tones, and (iii) confusing the diacritics marking tones. By “mispronunciation”, we mean the differences in tones used in Brisbane, Australia from the tones used in Vietnam. This study also examined the frequency of the contour of all tones produced by all four groups. The results show significant differences in terms of the frequency and distribution of irregular and common tone contours between the YVA group and the three other groups, suggesting that the YVA group failed to produce the tones correctly or did not reach the required standard of tone production of contemporary Southern Vietnamese. In addition, the findings with respect to tone contours showed that the tonal range of the YVA group is narrower than that of the other three groups.

This article reports a study that aimed to find out whether F0 patterns of L2 English produced by Vietnamese speakers are different to those of native English speakers, whether the non-native F0 patterns are transferred from Vietnamese, and to what extent English and Vietnamese F0 profiles differ. Ten native/L1 Australian English speakers, 20 Vietnamese speakers of English (10 beginners and 10 advanced speakers) and a control group of four native/L1 Vietnamese speakers were included. The F0 profiles (F0 maximum, F0 minimum, F0 range, F0 mean and F0 standard deviation at three levels: utterance, syllable and phoneme) were obtained from a set of 10 English sentences and 20 Vietnamese utterances. The results showed that F0 patterns of beginning-level L2 English are systematically different from those of native English speakers, which can be transferred from their native tone language. Nevertheless, the advanced speakers’ ability to produce native-like F0 patterns indicates the effect of language learning experience on prosodic acquisition. The data and results of this study contribute to the understanding of the process and nature of second language acquisition.