An experiment was conducted to study how Mandarin Chinese speakers of Dutch produced three Dutch pitch contours (Fall, Rise and Fall-rise) on final syllables in the intonational phrase. It was found that the Fall-Rise was the hardest contour for them to produce. In addition, there were substantial differences between the subjects with higher and those with lower proficiency in Dutch in the realization of the Fall and the Rise, which the higher proficiency subjects produced much as did the native control group.

Index Terms: Mandarin speakers of Dutch, Mandarin, Dutch, prosody, intonation contours