Lexical Stress Research Articles

Relevance of Prosodic Focus and Lexical Stress for Discourse Comprehension in Turkish: Evidence from Psychometric and Electrophysiological Data.

Prosody underpins various linguistic domains ranging from semantics and syntax to discourse. For instance, prosodic information in the form of lexical stress modifies meanings and, as such, syntactic contexts of words as in Turkish kaz-má "pickaxe" (noun) versus káz-ma "do not dig" (imperative). Likewise, prosody indicates the focused constituent of an utterance as the noun phrase filling the wh-spot in a dialogue like What did you eat? I ate----. In the present study, we investigated the relevance of such prosodic variations for discourse comprehension in Turkish. We aimed at answering how lexical stress and prosodic focus mismatches on critical noun phrases-resulting in grammatical anomalies involving both semantics and syntax and discourse-level anomalies, respectively-affect the perceived correctness of an answer to a question in a given context. To that end, 80 native speakers of Turkish, 40 participating in a psychometric experiment and 40 participating in an EEG experiment, were asked to judge the acceptability of prosodic mismatches that occur either separately or concurrently. Psychometric results indicated that lexical stress mismatch led to a lower correctness score than prosodic focus mismatch, and combined mismatch received the lowest score. Consistent with the psychometric data, EEG results revealed an N400 effect to combined mismatch, and this effect was followed by a P600 response to lexical stress mismatch. Conjointly, these results suggest that every source of prosodic information is immediately available and codetermines the interpretation of an utterance; however, semantically and syntactically relevant lexical stress information is assigned more significance by the language comprehension system compared with prosodic focus information.

Temporal-sampling theory and language in Down syndrome: An empirical study

BackgroundTemporal-sampling theory argues that difficulties in the processing of syllable stress auditory markers and in lexical stress discrimination contribute to explaining the language problems of children with developmental language disorder and of those with dyslexia. The theory has not been tested in other developmental disabilities. AimsThis research sought to assess the potential of temporal-sampling theory as a framework to accounting for language difficulties in Down syndrome (DS). Methods and proceduresThresholds for auditory markers of lexical stress, lexical stress discrimination, and receptive vocabulary were studied in teenagers and young adults with DS and in peers with other intellectual disability (ID) of unknown origin matched on chronological age and non-verbal cognition. Outcomes and resultsFrequency and intensity thresholds were higher in participants with DS, and their lexical stress discrimination and receptive vocabulary skills were lower than those of the group with other ID. Lexical stress discrimination was predicted by intensity thresholds and group, while receptive vocabulary was only predicted by lexical stress discrimination. Conclusions and implicationsThe results suggest that temporal-sampling theory is useful to explain language difficulties in individuals with DS or with other ID. This opens up new window opportunities for the design of language intervention programs in such populations.

Acoustics of the alignment of narrow focus prosody and lexical stress in native and nonnative English productions.

This study examined the acoustic correlates of the alignment between lexical stress and narrow focus prosody in English and investigated how this alignment is learned by second language learners whose native language is prosodically distinct from English. A production experiment was conducted where native English speakers and Korean learners of English were asked to read aloud sentences with a narrow focus on trisyllabic words with various stress patterns (e.g., ánimal, Novémber, submaríne). In the native English productions, the stressed syllables were characterized by either a rising F0 contour (for word-initial stress) or increased periodic energy (for word-medial and -final stress). The Korean speakers (KSs) produced stressed syllables with a rising F0 contour regardless of stress position, differing from the native speakers, and they exhibited greater periodic energy for word-medial and -final stressed syllables, similar to the native speakers. In addition, the KSs with higher English proficiency showed more native-like patterns by exhibiting a post-focus F0 drop immediately after word-initial stressed syllables. These findings are discussed in the context of existing literature and potential factors contributing to the challenges observed in L2 prosody learning.

The effects of implicit corrective feedback on production of lexical stress in L2 English

The interactionist approach to second language acquisition has yielded a plethora of studies confirming the positive impact of interaction and corrective feedback on second language (L2) development. Nevertheless, only a few studies have attempted to investigate the development of L2 prosody using the interactionist approach. The current study contributes to this line of research by investigating the relationship between recasts and the production of primary stress in L2 English. Following a pretest-posttest design, 68 L1 Arabic speakers were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups. The pre- and posttest comprised sentence-completion and information-exchange tasks, whereas the intervention was a role-play task that dyads carried out with the researcher. The intervention group received a recast upon producing target words with misplaced primary stress, whereas the control group did not receive any corrective feedback. The results of acoustic analyses, which focused on syllable duration, intensity, and pitch, indicated a positive relationship between recasts and development of primary stress placement. The results were also supported by expert listener judgments. The findings suggest that interaction and implicit corrective feedback play a positive role in the development of lexical stress.

Awareness, Perception, and Production of English Lexical Stress by Korean Learners of English

Awareness, Perception, and Production of English Lexical Stress by Korean Learners of English

On the interaction between vowel confusions (<e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/) and lexical stress in Latin inscriptions from Rome (ca. 119 BCE – ca. 600 CE)

AbstractThe aim of this article is to better define how changes in the Latin vowel system evolved over time in the stressed vs. the unstressed syllables in the Latin of Rome. To this end, the cases of <e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/ in an epigraphic corpus of 6,599 inscriptions from this city have been analysed by comparing the number of epigraphic errors occurring under and out of stress in five different periods. Our results indicate that, until about the 4th cent. CE, cases of <e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/ occur mostly in the unstressed syllables in our inscriptions, which is consistent with the view that the reorganisation of the vocalic qualities in the Latin vowel system affected the unstressed vowels before it affected the stressed ones. However, the same results also indicate that the number of epigraphic deviations concerning the stressed vowels /i/ and /u/ in our corpus increases from about the 4th–5th cent. CE onwards, and that this fact should be linked to the dephonologisation of contrastive vowel quantity (in the stressed syllables).

Audiovisual Perception of Lexical Stress: Beat Gestures and Articulatory Cues.

Human communication is inherently multimodal. Auditory speech, but also visual cues can be used to understand another talker. Most studies of audiovisual speech perception have focused on the perception of speech segments (i.e., speech sounds). However, less is known about the influence of visual information on the perception of suprasegmental aspects of speech like lexical stress. In two experiments, we investigated the influence of different visual cues (e.g., facial articulatory cues and beat gestures) on the audiovisual perception of lexical stress. We presented auditory lexical stress continua of disyllabic Dutch stress pairs together with videos of a speaker producing stress on the first or second syllable (e.g., articulating VOORnaam or voorNAAM). Moreover, we combined and fully crossed the face of the speaker producing lexical stress on either syllable with a gesturing body producing a beat gesture on either the first or second syllable. Results showed that people successfully used visual articulatory cues to stress in muted videos. However, in audiovisual conditions, we were not able to find an effect of visual articulatory cues. In contrast, we found that the temporal alignment of beat gestures with speech robustly influenced participants' perception of lexical stress. These results highlight the importance of considering suprasegmental aspects of language in multimodal contexts.

A meta-analysis of expressive prosody in cochlear implant users

IntroductionProsody is used to express indexical (identifying the talker), linguistic (e.g., question intonation, lexical stress), pragmatic (e.g., contrastive stress, sarcasm), and emotional/affective functions. It is manifested through changes in fundamental frequency (f0), intensity, and duration. F0 and intensity are degraded when perceived through a cochlear implant (CI). The purpose of this meta-analysis is to compare expressive prosody in speech produced by CI users versus normal hearing peers. MethodsA systematic search of the literature found 25 articles that met all inclusion criteria. These articles were assessed for quality, and data pertaining to the expression of f0, intensity, and duration, as well as classification accuracy and appropriateness ratings from normal hearing listeners, were extracted and meta-analyzed using random effects models. ResultsThe articles included in the meta-analysis were generally of acceptable or high quality. Meta-analyses revealed significant differences between individuals with CIs vs. normal hearing on all measures except mean f0, mean intensity, and rhythm. Effect sizes were generally medium to large. There was significant heterogeneity across studies, but little evidence of publication bias. ConclusionsCI users speak with less variable f0, smaller f0 contours, more variable intensity, a slower speech rate, and reduced final lengthening at syntactic boundaries. These acoustic differences are reflected in significantly poorer ratings of speech produced by CI users compared to their normal hearing peers, as assessed by groups of normal hearing listeners. Because atypical expressive prosody is associated with negative outcomes, clinicians should consider targeting prosody when working with individuals who use CIs.

Limits of short-term perceptual training for enhancing Seoul-Korean listeners’ use of English lexical stress in spoken word recognition

This study investigates whether short-term perceptual training can enhance Seoul-Korean listeners’ use of English lexical stress in spoken word recognition. Unlike English, Seoul Korean does not have lexical stress (or lexical pitch accents/tones). Seoul-Korean speakers at a high-intermediate English proficiency completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment adapted from Connell et al. (2018) (pre-/post-test). The experiment tested whether pitch in the target stimulus (accented versus unaccented first syllable) and vowel quality in the lexical competitor (reduced versus full first vowel) modulated fixations to the target word (e.g., PARrot; ARson) over the competitor word (e.g., paRADE or PARish; arCHIVE or ARcade). In the training (eight 30-min sessions over eight days), participants heard English lexical-stress minimal pairs uttered by four talkers (high variability) or one talker (low variability), categorized them as noun (first-syllable stress) or verb (second-syllable stress), and received accuracy feedback. The results showed that neither training increased target-over-competitor fixation proportions. Crucially, the same training had been found to improve Seoul- Korean listeners’ recall of English words differing in lexical stress (Tremblay et al., 2022) and their weighting of acoustic cues to English lexical stress (Tremblay et al., 2023). These results suggest that short-term perceptual training has a limited effect on target-over-competitor word activation.

The Effect of Pitch Accent on the Perception of English Lexical Stress: Evidence from English and Mandarin Chinese Listeners

The relative weighting of f0 and vowel reduction in English spoken word recognition at the sentence level were investigated in one two-alternative forced-choice word identification experiment. In the experiment, an H* pitch-accented or a deaccented word fragment (e.g., AR- in the word archive) was presented at the end of a carrier sentence for identification. The results of the experiment revealed differences in the cue weighting of English lexical stress perception between native and non-native listeners. For native English listeners, vowel quality was a more prominent cue than f0, while native Mandarin Chinese listeners employed both vowel quality and f0 in a comparable fashion. These results suggested that (a) vowel reduction is superior to f0 in signaling initial stress in the words and (b) f0 facilitates the recognition of word initial stress, which is modulated by first language.

Enhancing Language Learners’ Comprehensibility through Automated Analysis of Pause Positions and Syllable Prominence

This research paper addresses the challenge of providing effective feedback on spontaneous speech produced by second language (L2) English learners. As the position of pauses and lexical stress is often considered a determinative factor for easy comprehension by listeners, an automated pipeline is introduced to analyze the position of pauses in speech, the lexical stress patterns of polysyllabic content words, and the degree of prosodic contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables, on the basis of F0, intensity, and duration measures. The pipeline is applied to 11 h of spontaneous speech from 176 French students with B1 and B2 proficiency levels. It appeared that B1 students make more pauses within phrases and less pauses between clauses than B2 speakers, with a large diversity among speakers at both proficiency levels. Overall, lexical stress is correctly placed in only 35.4% of instances, with B2 students achieving a significantly higher score (36%) than B1 students (29.6%). However, great variation among speakers is also observed, ranging from 0% to 68% in stress position accuracy. Stress typically falls on the last syllable regardless of the prosodic expectations, with the strong influence of syllable duration. Only proficient speakers show substantial F0 and intensity contrasts.

Characteristics of Lexical Stress in Hebrew-Speaking Children With Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the ability of Hebrew-speaking children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) to produce lexical stress. A total of 36 children aged between 4 and 7 years, 18 children with CAS, and 18 typically developing (TD) children participated in the study. All children completed language and speech assessments. The children imitated 20 weak-strong and strong-weak target words within short sentences and in isolation. Acoustic analysis of the vowels in the stressed and unstressed syllables of the target words and perceptual judgment of the words by six speech-language pathologists were conducted. The acoustic analysis showed significant differences in duration, fundamental frequency, and amplitude between stressed and unstressed vowels in weak-strong and strong-weak words and in both groups of children. The total duration for both the stressed and weak syllables was longer in children with CAS compared to TD children. Rated on a Likert scale of 1-5, where 5 indicates correct production, the productions of lexical stress in the CAS group were judged as above 4 on average but were significantly worse compared to the TD group. The target productions of children with CAS were judged as including excessive, equal, or misplaced stress in 10.8% of the productions, whereas 5.8% of the target productions of the TD children were judged as having inappropriate stress. The present findings suggest that Hebrew-speaking children with CAS produce the acoustic characteristics of lexical stress similarly to their peers, and their productions are perceived as having relatively good lexical stress (above 4), although not as good as TD children.

The effects of word and beat priming on Mandarin lexical stress recognition: an event-related potential study

Abstract Music and language are unique communication tools in human society, where stress plays a crucial role. Many studies have examined the recognition of lexical stress in Indo-European languages using beat/rhythm priming, but few studies have examined the cross-domain relationship between musical and linguistic stress in tonal languages. The current study investigates how musical stress and lexical stress influence lexical stress recognition in Mandarin. In the auditory priming experiment, disyllabic Mandarin words with initial or final stress were primed by disyllabic words or beats with either congruent or incongruent stress patterns. Results showed that the incongruent condition elicited larger P2 and the late positive component (LPC) amplitudes than the congruent condition. Moreover, the Strong-Weak primes elicited larger N400 amplitudes than the Weak-Strong primes, and the Weak-Strong primes yielded larger LPC amplitudes than the Strong-Weak primes. The findings reveal the neural correlates of the cross-domain influence between music and language during lexical stress recognition in Mandarin.

A principled approach to teaching German lexical stress assignment

Abstract This paper reports on the decisions made in the development and delivery of the training outlined in Maczuga, O’Brien and Knaus (2017). Framed within a Processing Instruction framework, this contribution considers previous input-based training research, which has primarily focused on the training of second language segments. In addition to providing a brief summary of the results, the paper also includes relevant recent research and provides a discussion of the limitations and recommendations for future work in the area.

Production of Lexical and Phrasal Stress by Native Speakers and Korean Learners of English

Production of Lexical and Phrasal Stress by Native Speakers and Korean Learners of English

Vietnamese EFL Learners’ Production of English Lexical Stress

This study investigated the extent to which Vietnamese EFL learners were able to produce English stress patterns in words with two, three, and four syllables. Data were garnered from 45 participants studying at an English language center in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The results indicated that the participants exhibited different levels of competence in producing stress patterns across syllables of varying lengths. They demonstrated comparable proficiency in correctly placing stress on the penultimate and ultimate syllables in two-syllable words. However, it was observed that significant challenges arose in three-syllable words, particularly in accurately placing stress on the final syllable. Likewise, when it came to four-syllable words, the participants demonstrated a lack of proficiency in correctly placing stress on the pre-antepenultimate syllable. The study enhanced our understanding of the difficulties encountered by Vietnamese EFL learners in acquiring English stress patterns. It, therefore, emphasized the necessity of implementing focused instructional interventions to enhance the ability of EFL learners to produce stress accurately.

Lexical Stress Identification in Cochlear Implant-Simulated Speech by Non-Native Listeners.

This study investigates whether a presumed difference in the perceptibility of cues to lexical stress in spectro-temporally degraded simulated cochlear implant (CI) speech affects how listeners weight these cues during a lexical stress identification task, specifically in their non-native language. Previous research suggests that in English, listeners predominantly rely on a reduction in vowel quality as a cue to lexical stress. In Dutch, changes in the fundamental frequency (F0) contour seem to have a greater functional weight than the vowel quality contrast. Generally, non-native listeners use the cue-weighting strategies from their native language in the non-native language. Moreover, few studies have suggested that these cues to lexical stress are differently perceptible in spectro-temporally degraded electric hearing, as CI users appear to make more effective use of changes in vowel quality than of changes in the F0 contour as cues to linguistic phenomena. In this study, native Dutch learners of English identified stressed syllables in CI-simulated and non-CI-simulated Dutch and English words that contained changes in the F0 contour and vowel quality as cues to lexical stress. The results indicate that neither the cue-weighting strategies in the native language nor in the non-native language are influenced by the perceptibility of cues in the spectro-temporally degraded speech signal. These results are in contrast to our expectations based on previous research and support the idea that cue weighting is a flexible and transferable process.

Unraveling the Complexities of Second Language Lexical Stress Processing: The Impact of First Language Transfer, Second Language Proficiency, and Exposure

AbstractWe investigated the role of cue weighting, second language (L2) proficiency, and L2 daily exposure in L2 learning of suprasegmentals different from the first language (L1), using eye‐tracking. Spanish monolinguals, English–Spanish learners, and Mandarin–Spanish learners saw a paroxytone and an oxytone verb (e.g., FIRma–firMÓ “s/he signs–signed”), listened to a sentence containing one of the verbs, and chose the one that they heard. The three languages have contrastive lexical stress, but suprasegmentals have a greater functional load in Mandarin than in English. Monolinguals predicted suffixes accurately with both stress conditions and favored oxytones, but learners predicted suffixes accurately only with oxytones, the condition activating fewer lexical competitors. Monolinguals predicted suffixes accurately sooner but at a slower rate than did learners. L2 proficiency, but not L1 or L2 exposure, facilitated L2 predictions. In conclusion, learners of a contrastive‐stress L1 rely on L2 suprasegmentals to the same extent as monolinguals, regardless of their L1. Lower L2 proficiency and higher cognitive load (more lexical competitors) reduce learners’ reliance on suprasegmentals.

Data‐Driven Learning for Pronunciation: Perception and Production of Lexical Stress and Prominence in Academic English

AbstractIssues of intelligibility may arise amongst English learners when acquiring new words and phrases in North American academic settings, perhaps in part due to limited linguistic data available to the learner for understanding language use patterns. To this end, this paper examines the effects of Data‐Driven Learning for Pronunciation (DDLfP) on lexical stress and prominence in the US academic context. 65 L2 English learners in North American universities completed a diagnostic and pretest with listening and speaking items before completing four online lessons and a posttest on academic words and formulas (i.e., multi‐word sequences). Experimental group participants (n = 40) practiced using an audio corpus of highly proficient L2 speakers while comparison group participants (n = 25) were given teacher‐created pronunciation materials. Logistic regression results indicated that the group who used the corpus significantly increased their recognition of prominence in academic formulas. In the spoken tasks, both groups improved in their lexical stress pronunciation, but only the DDLfP learners improved their production of prominence in academic formulas. Learners reported that they valued DDLfP efforts for pronunciation learning across contexts and speakers. Findings have implications for teachers of L2 pronunciation and support the use of corpora for language teaching and learning.

Prominence effects in vocal iconicity: Implications for lexical access and language changea).

This paper explores how three cognitive and perceptual cues, vocal iconicity, resemblance-based mappings between form and meaning, and segment position and lexical stress, interact to affect word formation and language processing. The study combines an analysis of the word-internal positions that iconic segments occur in based on data from 245 language families with an experimental study in which participants representing more than 30 languages rated iconic and non-iconic pseudowords. The pseudowords were designed to systematically vary segment and stress placement across syllables. The results for study 1 indicate that segments used iconically appear approximately 0.26 segment positions closer toward the beginning of words compared to non-iconic segments. In study 2, it was found that iconic segments occurring in stressed syllables and non-iconic segments occurring in the second syllable were rated as significantly more fitting. These findings suggest that the interplay between vocal iconicity and prominence effects increases the predictive function of iconic segments by foregrounding sounds, which intrinsically carry semantic information. Consequently, these results contribute to the understanding of the widespread occurrence of vocal iconicity in human languages.