Children's Perception of Stress Contrasts

Abstract

Children are believed to perceive and produce stress at an early age, but we have little knowledge of what they actually know about the rules of stress in a language at various ages. In an attempt to determine children's competence in regard to one aspect of English stress, children of different ages were asked to identify two types of noun phrases that were minimal pairs with respect to stress. One type of noun phrase was a compound noun with a primary-secondary stress pattern (e.g., gréenhouse), and the other was an adjective followed by a noun with a secondary-primary stress pattern (e.g., green hóuse). Children listened to the complete set of items in an irregular order and were asked to identify what they heard each time by choosing between two pictures corresponding to the terminal pair. The percentage of correct identifications increased with age and grade, reaching almost 100% by the sixth grade. Individual variation and sex differences also played a role and are discussed. [This work was supported by a NINDB grant.]