Perception of lexical stress and sentence focus by Korean-speaking and Spanish-speaking L2 learners of English

Abstract

The current study investigates the extent to which the phonological features of a first language (L1) influence the perception of prominence among students of a second language (L2). Considering that Spanish has word-level stress and phrase-level prominence while Korean has only phrase-level accent, we examined how these cross-linguistic differences in the native language influence the processing of an L2 (here, English) lexical stress and sentence focus. In this study, 32 Spanish learners of English and 38 Korean learners of English completed a lexical stress and a sentence focus oddity test. The results revealed that having lexical stress and phrasal accent in the L1 facilitates the acquisition of L2 prominence, but that differences in how this information is instantiated in the L1 may have a negative effect in its acquisition.