The weighting of vowel quality in perception of English lexical stress.

Abstract

Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional, involving F0, duration, intensity, and vowel quality. Previous research found that Mandarin speakers had problems using vowel reduction in English lexical stress production. Assuming nativelike perception is a prerequisite to nativelike production for non‐native speech, the weight of vowel quality with comparison to that of F0, duration, and intensity in Mandarin listeners’ stress perception was examined. Mandarin and English listeners judged lexical stress placement in synthesized tokens of desert, in which the first syllable /de/ was varied along vowel quality and each of the other cues depending on the pair of cues in focus. Results showed that both Mandarin and English listeners consistently weighted vowel quality more than the other cues. Vowel quality and duration were treated as combinational cues by both groups. English listeners used both intensity and vowel quality (separately), while Mandarin listeners did not use intensity at all. Findings suggest that Mandarin listeners had a nativelike use of vowel quality for perceiving English stress. However, Mandarin listeners treated F0 in a different way from English listeners, possibly owing to the influence of their native tonal background. Implications for the interaction between production and perception in second‐language learning will be also discussed. [Work supported by Purdue Linguistics.]