Lexical stress and lexical access: homographs versus nonhomographs.

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the perceptual effects of altering lexical stress during word recognition. A detection task was utilized to measure subjects’ speed of response to target phonemes preceded by two-syllable homograph and nonhomograph words. These experimental words were pronounced with correct/incorrect lexical stress. When a nonhomograph was misstressed, a nonsense word was the result. When a homograph was misstressed, another English word resulted. Examination of subjects’ speeds of response to target phonemes preceded by correctly/incorrectly stressed nonhomograph words indicated slower speed of response when the stimulus word was stressed incorrectly; word recognition appeared to be affected when a subject heard a misstressed nonhomograph (a nonsense word). However, subjects’ speed of response to target phonemes following correctly/incorrectly stressed homographs were similar. Mispronounced homographs did not appear to impede word recognition. It was possible that when subjects heard a misstressed homograph (another English word), they relied more upon the prosodie contour for word recognition.