How natural is Chinese L2 English prosody?

Standard varieties of Chinese and English have major typological prosodic differences, which present considerable difficulties for Chinese L2 learners of English at all levels: first, differences in the phonotactic foundations of prosody (syllable and syllable sequence patterns); second, the difference between lexical tone language and lexical stress-accent language; third, timing differences in the prosodic hierarchy, including the timing of grammatical units. We compare Chinese L2 and English native speakers in respect of temporal distribution patterns at the phoneticsphonology interface. The SPPAS and TGA phonetic analysis tools are used. Results indicate clear relations between timing patterns at different L2 proficiency levels and native patterns.