Cue weighting in the perception of Tagalog stress

Abstract

Relative importance of different acoustic cues in perceived prominence is language specific. In Tagalog, it has been argued that there is a lexical level stress, and a stressed syllable exhibits higher fundamental frequency, longer duration, and stronger intensity (Gonzales, 1970). Still, the relative weight of these cues has not been discussed in the prosodic literature. The purpose of the current study is to quantify the relative weighting of multiple acoustic cues in the perception of lexical stress in Tagalog. A forced-choice identification test was conducted with a disyllabic word /babad/. Each of the three acoustic cues in both syllables was manipulated in two levels, i.e., strong and weak, under fully crossed combinations of the cues. A total of sixty-four stimuli were tested in four sessions, and fifty-three native speakers of Tagalog participated in the test. The result of a generalized linear model using a binomial distribution revealed that the primary perceptual cue is duration. Longer duration was significantly associated with perceived prominence, and higher fundamental frequency to a lesser degree. However, intensity cues did not seem to play a significant role in stress perception in Tagalog.