Processing Of Lexical Stress Research Articles

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.

Neural correlates of lexical stress processing in a foreign free-stress language.

The paper examines the discrimination of lexical stress contrasts in a foreign language from a neural perspective. The aim of the study was to identify the areas associated with word stress processing (in comparison with vowel processing), when listeners of a fixed-stress language have to process stress in a foreign free-stress language. We asked French-speaking participants to process stress and vowel contrasts in Spanish, a foreign language that the participants did not know. Participants performed a discrimination task on Spanish word pairs differing either with respect to word stress (penultimate or final stressed word) or with respect to the final vowel while functional magnetic resonance imaging data was acquired. Behavioral results showed lower accuracy and longer reaction times for discriminating stress contrasts than vowel contrasts. The contrast Stress>Vowel revealed an increased bilateral activation of regions shown to be associated with stress processing (i.e., supplementary motor area, insula, middle/superior temporal gyrus), as well as a stronger involvement of areas related to more domain-general cognitive control functions (i.e., bilateral inferior frontal gyrus). The contrast Vowel>Stress showed an increased activation in regions typically associated with the default mode network (known for decreasing its activity during attentionally more demanding tasks). When processing Spanish stress contrasts as compared to processing vowel contrasts, native listeners of French activated to a higher degree anterior networks including regions related to cognitive control. They also show a decrease in regions related to the default mode network. These findings, together with the behavioral results, reflect the higher cognitive demand, and therefore, the larger difficulties, for French-speaking listeners during stress processing as compared to vowel processing.

Spanish heritage speakers’ processing of lexical stress

Abstract This study examines the status of lexical stress in the processing system of heritage speakers of Spanish and whether or not it is influenced by their experience with English. Participants completed an ABX matching task with auditory stimuli differing in the location of stress or in one consonantal sound. Findings reveal that heritage speakers are more accurate in consonant-based trials than in stress-based ones, but only when matching stimuli were non-adjacent, which suggests that their stress-processing strategies pattern more closely with those of native English speakers. Furthermore, dominance and knowledge of Spanish appear to be associated with increased phonological sensibility to stress contrasts. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

Korean listeners’ processing of suprasegmental lexical contrasts in Korean and English: A cue-based transfer approach

This study investigates whether listeners’ use of prosodic cues to lexical contrasts can transfer from one phonological phenomenon in the native (first) language (L1) to another in a second/foreign language (L2). It investigates how Gyeongsang-Korean (GK) and Seoul-Korean (SK) listeners process English lexical stress. GK does not have lexical stress but has lexical pitch accents, whereas SK has neither; GK listeners are thus hypothesized to be more sensitive to pitch as a cue to lexical contrasts than SK listeners. GK and SK listeners completed a task in which they recalled four-item sequences of Korean words differing suprasegmentally (pitch accent contrast) or segmentally (phonemic contrast). The results showed a significant L1-by-contrast-type interaction, with GK listeners outperforming SK listeners in the pitch accent contrast condition. These results confirm GK listeners’ greater sensitivity to pitch in the L1. The same GK and SK listeners, who were matched in English proficiency, and native English listeners completed a similar task with English words differing suprasegmentally (stress contrast) or segmentally (phonemic contrast). The results showed a significant L1-by-contrast-type interaction, with GK listeners outperforming SK (and English) listeners in the stress-contrast condition. These results provide robust evidence for a cue-based transfer approach to L2 lexical stress processing.

Near native-like stress pattern perception in English-French bilinguals as indexed by the mismatch negativity

We examined lexical stress processing in English-French bilinguals. Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) responses were recorded in response to English and French pseudowords, whose primary stress occurred either on a language-consistent “usual” or language-inconsistent “unusual” syllable. In most conditions, the pseudowords elicited two consecutive MMNs, and somewhat surprisingly, these MMNs were not systematically modulated by bilingual experience. This suggests that it is possible to achieve native-like pre-attentive processing of lexical stress, even in a language that one has not learned since birth.

Music training and the use of songs or rhythm: Do they help for lexical stress processing?

Abstract Previous studies revealed that musicians outperformed non-musicians in different language tasks and that the use of music or rhythm in teaching material can benefit language learning. Here, we examined whether music, as a learner’s characteristic (musicians/non-musicians) or as a characteristic of the task (use of music or beat) can facilitate foreign language lexical stress processing. 25 non-musician and 21 musician French native speakers performed a discrimination task in which stimuli were either naturally spoken, spoken with a beat on the lexical stress, or sung. The participants heard 96 stimuli of three Dutch (non)words varying in the lexical stress position and mentioned which of the last two words was pronounced as the first. The results show that musicians outperformed non-musicians, that the accuracy rate is higher for sung stimuli and spoken stimuli with a beat than for spoken stimuli and that music training interacts with the musical characteristics of the stimuli.

Functional lateralization of lexical stress representation: a systematic review of patient data.

According to the functional lateralization hypothesis (FLH) the lateralization of speech prosody depends both on its function (linguistic = left, emotional = right) and on the size of the units it operates on (small = left, large = right). In consequence, according to the FLH, lexical stress should be processed by the left (language-dominant) hemisphere, given its linguistic function and small unit size. We performed an exhaustive search for case studies of patients with acquired dysprosody due to unilateral brain damage. In contrast to previous reviews we only regarded dysprosody at the lexical level (excluding phrasal stress). Moreover, we focused on the representational stage of lexical stress processing, excluding more peripheral perceptual or motor deficits. Applying these criteria, we included nine studies reporting on 11 patients. All of these patients showed representational deficits in word stress processing following a lesion in their language-dominant hemisphere. In 9 out of 11 patients, it was the left hemisphere which was affected. This is a much more consistent pattern as found in previous reviews, in which less rigorous inclusion criteria may have blurred the pattern of results. We conclude that the representation of lexical stress crucially relies on the functioning of the language-dominant (mostly left) hemisphere.

Asymmetric development of perception and production of lexical stress in Korean second‐language (L2) learners of English.

This study explores perception and production of lexical stress information in L2 English learners whose L1 employs a fixed rhythmic pattern at the lexical level. Nineteen English L1 speakers and 14 Korean L2 learners of English were trained to learn 16 minimal stress nonword pairs with picture referents which are segmentally disambiguating in the last syllable (/dȝákunaɪ/ vs /dȝakúnɚ/). The eye‐tracking perception experiment revealed that English L1 speakers exploited lexical stress information of the first two syllables to spot the target word in the instruction, “Click on the (target word),” whereas Korean L2 learners’ identification of the target word was delayed until the last syllable. In their production of words in a carrier, “This is the (target word),” however, L2 learners used loudness and durational cue to indicate alternative prominence of the first two syllable as did English L1 speakers. These results imply the development of production and processing of lexical stress in L2 word learning can be asymmetrical. This asymmetry is attributable to the L1 which has a fixed (T)HLH accentual phrase pattern at the lexical level and thus provides little incentive for the lexically specified stress processing. [Work supported by Linguistics Dept., Ohio State University.]

Music Training Facilitates Lexical Stress Processing

WE INVESTIGATED WHETHER MUSIC TRAINING facilitates the processing of lexical stress in natives of a language that does not use lexical stress contrasts. Musically trained (musicians) or untrained (nonmusicians) French natives were presented with two tasks: speeded classification that required them to focus on a segmental contrast and ignore irrelevant stress variations, and sequence repetition involving either segmental or stress contrasts. In the latter situation, French natives are usually "deaf" to lexical stress, but this was less the case for musicians, demonstrating that music expertise enhances sensitivity to stress contrasts. This increased sensitivity does not seem, however, to unavoidably bias musicians' attention to stress contrasts: in segmental-based speeded classification, musicians were not more affected than nonmusicians by irrelevant stress variations when overall performance was controlled for. Implications regarding both the notion of modularity of processing and the advantage that musicianship may afford for second language learning are discussed.

The processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition: Typicality effects and orthographic correlates

Many studies that have examined reading at the single-word level have been restricted to the processing of monosyllabic stimuli, and, as a result, lexical stress has not been widely investigated. In the experiments reported here, we used disyllabic words and nonwords to investigate the processing of lexical stress during visual word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found an effect of stress typicality in naming and lexical decision. Typically stressed words (trochaic nouns and iambic verbs) elicited fewer errors than atypically stressed words (iambic nouns and trochaic verbs). In Experiment 3, we carried out an analysis of 340 word endings and found clear orthographic correlates of both grammatical category and lexical stress in word endings. In Experiment 4, we demonstrated that readers are sensitive to these cues in their processing of nonwords during two tasks: sentence construction and stress assignment. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to psycholinguistic models of single-word reading.