Patterns of prominence in L2: Observations from learners of Swedish with L1s of diverse prominence properties

Swedish has – like other Germanic languages – flexible stress placement, which underlies morphological rules and is also based on the individual word’s origin. The achievement of the correct usage when learning Swedish is challenging. As second language learners of Swedish in the classrooms present speakers of a variety of first languages (L1s), the opportunity has been taken to have a closer look on how stress in L2 is handled. For that reason, learners with Somali, Albanian, Vietnamese and Farsi as their first language were recorded when speaking L2-Swedish. These languages exemplify a variety of systems in regard to the usage of stress. The recorded speech was analysed and the observed way of administering stress in L2 was compared to the organisation of stress in L1.