Trochaic Stress Research Articles

Turkish EFL learners’ knowledge, perception, and production of suprafixes as part of lexical competence

Vocabulary and grammar are essential to language proficiency (Richards, 2015). Some word families and grammatical categories can only be distinguished by prosodic properties such as suprafixes. In English, specific noun/adjective-verb pairs, sometimes called disyllabic words, receive primary stress on different syllables. Typically, nouns receive trochaic stress, while verbs receive iambic stress. Research shows that suprafixes are difficult for language learners from diverse linguistic and prosodic backgrounds. Given the scarcity of research in specific contexts (e.g., Turkish EFL), this study explored Turkish EFL learners’ suprafixational knowledge, perception, and production. Participants were B1-level preparatory school students of a prominent state university. Data were collected through a test of knowledge (n=110), a test of perception (n=80), and a test of production (n=50). Results showed poor knowledge, perception, and production of suprafixes among Turkish EFL learners. Minor variations in suprafixational competence were observed in males and females. Additionally, different noun-verb pairs posed a challenge for both genders. The results were discussed, and recommendations for future research were made. The study concludes that Turkish EFL learners must receive suprasegmental training focusing on suprafixes.

On the Character of Georgian Verse

Research on the character of Georgian verse started in 1731. Since that time, some researchers have described Georgian verse as syllabic, while others have said that it is syllabotonic. The dispute about the character of Georgian verse became particularly acute in the 20th century. The main text the participants in the dispute analysed was a prominent piece of Georgian poetry of the 12th century – The Knight in the Panther’s Skin by Shota Rustaveli. It consists of 16-syllable monorhymical quatrains that have a special name in Georgian – shairi. There are two varieties of shairi – the so-called high shairi (4 4 4 4) and low shairi (5 3 5 3). The high shairi was the main issue of the dispute. The researchers who regarded Georgian verse as belonging to the syllabotonic system divided high shairi into trochaic feet, while the supporters of the syllabic theory denied the presence of metric trochaic stress in high shairi, believing that the penultimate syllables can be stressed only in two-syllable words but not in words with multiple syllables (due to the dactylic accentuation typical in the modern Georgian language).
 Since natural dactylic stress (found in low shairi) reflects the accentuation norms of the language of the later period (including those of modern Georgian), we assume that metric stress in high shairi, which is no longer found in modern Georgian speech, could be a reflection of the natural accentuation of the comparatively earlier period in the development of the Georgian language. Checking this hypothesis by relying on relevant linguistic literature, we reconstructed the archaic movable and phonologically relevant stress in the rhymed words in The Knight in the Panther’s Skin. We found that metric stresses of both high and low shairi in this epic poem are actually archaic linguistic stresses. This conclusion differs from the views expressed in concepts developed earlier. It enables us to take a fresh look at the metrics and rhymes of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin as well as the main principles and specific features of Georgian verse in general.

Towards a Native OPERA Hypothesis: Musicianship and English Stress Perception.

Musical experience facilitates speech perception. French musicians, to whom stress is foreign, have been found to perceive English stress more accurately than French non-musicians. This study investigated whether this musical advantage also applies to native listeners. English musicians and non-musicians completed an English stress discrimination task and two control tasks. With age, non-verbal intelligence and short-term memory controlled, the musicians exhibited a perceptual advantage relative to the non-musicians. This perceptual advantage was equally potent to both trochaic and iambic stress patterns. In terms of perceptual strategy, the two groups showed differential use of acoustic cues for iambic but not trochaic stress. Collectively, the results could be taken to suggest that musical experience enhances stress discrimination even among native listeners. Remarkably, this musical advantage is highly consistent and does not particularly favour either stress pattern. For iambic stress, the musical advantage appears to stem from the differential use of acoustic cues by musicians. For trochaic stress, the musical advantage may be rooted in enhanced durational sensitivity.

Foreword

The winter issue of Volume 11 presents a selection of seven different research articles on Japanese, Tetun Dili, Sylheti Bangla, Pahari, and Saraiki language. The rise of the Covid-19 pandemic, of which continuation unfortunately still allows many to collect data for research, has prompted us to publish several other interesting studies. This compilation brings to the readers the following topics.
 This issue opens with Saki AMANO’s paper “Polysemy of ‘Common Language’ and the Modern Japanese Nation: The Universalization of a ‘Standard Language’ to correct ‘Dialects’?”. The author examines the term futsūgo (common language) over two periods and explains the shift from the populace’s everyday commonplace language to a unified national language.
 In the next paper “From Native-speaker Likeness to Self-representation in Language: Views from the Acquisition of Japanese Transitive and Intransitive Verbs”, ITO Hideaki considers the degree to which a language user’s own will is recognized in language education. The author demonstrates that the usage-centric acquisition process can create opportunities for language users to make expressive choices focused on what they wish to say.
 The third article is Nastja PAHOR’s paper “Corpus analysis of the collocations of the transitive verbs owaru and oeru”, in which the author approaches the transitivity of Japanese verbs from the corpus perspective. Semantical analysis of collocations in combination with the morphological analysis of co-occurring verbs reveals some interesting findings.
 After the first three papers that focus on Japanese, the fourth one brings some new insights into Tetun Dili. Andrei A. AVRAM in his paper “Contact-induced variation in Tetun Dili phonology” analyzes Portuguese influence on Tetun Dili phonology, and demonstrates that the intricacies of inter-speaker variation cannot be merely reduced to variation between more Portuguese-like phonology and a more Tetun-Dili-like one. 
 Arpita GOSWAMI’s paper “Marked Geminates as Evidence of Sonorants in Sylheti Bangla: An Optimality Account” analyzes the universal concept that sonorants are marked geminates in the gemination process of Sylheti Bangla, and proposes a hierarchy of the constraints for analyzing the gemination processes in SHB. Besides, the author illustrates some additional constraints found to be necessary.
 The following article “Stop Voicing and F0 Perturbation in Pahari” presents the findings of Nazia RASHID, Abdul Qadir KHAN, Ayesha SOHAIL, and Bilal Ahmed ABBASI. The authors investigate the perturbation effect of the voicing of initial stops on the fundamental frequency of the following vowels in Pahari. 
 Last but not least, “Word Stress system of the Saraiki language” is an article by Firdos ATTA, who presents an Optimality-Theoretic analysis of Saraiki word stress. The author concludes that Saraiki has a trochaic stress system and falls in the category of quantity-sensitive languages. This paper also indicates further research work on word stress at the sentence level.
 Editors and Editorial board wish the regular and new readers of the ALA journal a pleasant read full of inspiration, and a rise of new research ideas inspired by these papers.

Development of singleton consonants in French-speaking children with typical versus protracted phonological development: The influence of word length, word shape and stress

Purpose To provide preliminary reference data for singleton consonant development in children with typical development (TD) versus protracted phonological development (PPD) for Manitoba Canadian French, a language with an uncommon stress pattern (“iambic” or “right-headed”). Following a nonlinear perspective, singleton consonants were examined both as segments and in terms of the structure of words. Higher match levels for consonants were expected in shorter versus longer words and in stressed versus unstressed syllables. A larger effect was expected in children with PPD than those with TD. Method Participants included 20 TD children and 12 with PPD aged 2 to 4 years from Manitoba, Canada. Single words were digitally recorded by trained speech-language pathologists, transcribed by native French speakers and analysed with Phon 3.0. Result Friedman and Wilcoxon Signed Rank tests revealed that children with PPD had significantly more mismatches than TD children, especially in contexts of unstressed syllables in multisyllabic words. The most common mismatch (“error”) patterns were consonant substitution, consonant deletion and syllable deletion. Conclusion Word length and stress were found to influence consonant development within French, similar to findings in languages with left-headed or trochaic stress. Clinically, the findings underscore the relevance of considering the child’s entire phonological system for identification of strengths and needs in assessment and intervention.

European Portuguese-Learning Infants Look Longer at Iambic Stress: New Data on Language Specificity in Early Stress Perception.

The ability to perceive lexical stress patterns has been shown to develop in language-specific ways. However, previous studies have examined this ability in languages that are either clearly stress-based (favoring the development of a preference for trochaic stress, like English and German) or syllable-based (favoring the development of no stress preferences, like French, Spanish, and Catalan) and/or where the frequency distributions of stress patterns provide clear data for a predominant pattern (like English and Hebrew). European Portuguese (EP) is a different type of language, which presents conflicting sets of cues related to rhythm, frequency, and stress correlates that challenge existing accounts of early stress perception. Using an anticipatory eye movement (AEM) paradigm implemented with eye-tracking, EP-learning infants at 5–6 months demonstrated sensitivity to the trochaic/iambic stress contrast, with evidence of asymmetrical perception or preference for iambic stress. These results are not predicted by the rhythmic account of developing stress perception, and suggest that the language-particular phonological patterns impacting the frequency of trochaic and iambic stress, beyond lexical words with two or more syllables, together with the prosodic correlates of stress, drive the early acquisition of lexical stress. Our findings provide the first evidence of sensitivity to stress patterns in the presence of segmental variability by 5–6 months, and highlight the importance of testing developing stress perception in languages with diverse combinations of rhythmic, phonological, and phonetic properties.

The evolution of word prosody in the Papuan languages of Eastern Timor

Abstract Word prosody and sentence-level intonation undergo complex interactions through time. In this study, I focus on the effects of intonation on the development of word prosody in two closely related Papuan languages, Makalero and Fataluku. Though both are very similar segmentally, Makalero’s prosodic system is based on trochaic stress, while Fataluku is characterized primarily by phrase-level intonational contours. On the basis of internal comparative evidence, I demonstrate that the trochaic stress system of Makalero is older, and that a series of well-motivated sound changes has led to a dissociation of stress and intonation in Fataluku. A disassociation between stress and intonation is typologically unexpected, and analysis of the historical development of Fataluku’s system sheds light on how such a dissociation may have taken place.

Does lexical stress influence 17-month-olds' mapping of verbs and nouns?

English-learning infants attend to lexical stress when learning new words. Attention to lexical stress might be beneficial for word learning by providing an indication of the grammatical class of that word. English disyllabic nouns commonly have trochaic (strong-weak) stress, whereas English disyllabic verbs commonly have iambic (weak-strong) stress. We explored whether 17-month-old infants use word stress to resolve an ambiguous labeling event where objects and actions are equally plausible referents. Infants were habituated to 2 words paired with 2 objects, with each object performing a distinct path action. They were subsequently tested on (a) a change in object but not path action or (b) a change in path action but not the object. When infants were taught verb-friendly iambic labels, their looking times increased both when the action switched and when the object switched. Infants who were taught noun-friendly trochaic labels demonstrated an increase in looking time only when the object switched. These results demonstrate that in ambiguous labeling events infants map iambic labels to both actions and objects, and trochaic labels to the objects but not to the actions, suggesting a bias for words with trochaic stress to refer to objects. Seventeen-month-old infants can use trochaic lexical stress to guide their word learning in ambiguous situations, but iambic stress cues may not preferentially guide infants' mappings of actions or objects. (PsycINFO Database Record

Nonword repetition in adults who stutter: The effects of stimuli stress and auditory-orthographic cues.

PurposeAdults who stutter (AWS) are less accurate in their immediate repetition of novel phonological sequences compared to adults who do not stutter (AWNS). The present study examined whether manipulation of the following two aspects of traditional nonword repetition tasks unmask distinct weaknesses in phonological working memory in AWS: (1) presentation of stimuli with less-frequent stress patterns, and (2) removal of auditory-orthographic cues immediately prior to response.MethodFifty-two participants (26 AWS, 26 AWNS) produced 12 bisyllabic nonwords in the presence of corresponding auditory-orthographic cues (i.e., immediate repetition task), and the absence of auditory-orthographic cues (i.e., short-term recall task). Half of each cohort (13 AWS, 13 AWNS) were exposed to the stimuli with high-frequency trochaic stress, and half (13 AWS, 13 AWNS) were exposed to identical stimuli with lower-frequency iambic stress.ResultsNo differences in immediate repetition accuracy for trochaic or iambic nonwords were observed for either group. However, AWS were less accurate when recalling iambic nonwords than trochaic nonwords in the absence of auditory-orthographic cues.ConclusionsManipulation of two factors which may minimize phonological demand during standard nonword repetition tasks increased the number of errors in AWS compared to AWNS. These findings suggest greater vulnerability in phonological working memory in AWS, even when producing nonwords as short as two syllables.

Infant-directed speech reduces English-learning infants' preference for trochaic words.

Over the past couple of decades, research has established that (1) infant-directed speech (IDS) facilitates speech, language, and cognitive development; and (2) infants are sensitive to the rhythmic structures in the ambient language. However, little is known about the role of IDS in infants' processing of rhythmic structures. Building on these two lines of research, whether IDS enhances infants' sensitivity to the predominant stress pattern (trochaic) in English was asked. To address this question, 9-month-old American infants were familiarized and tested with both trochaic (e.g., lazy) and iambic (e.g., cartoon) words presented in either IDS or adult-directed speech (ADS). Infants showed listening preference for the trochaic over iambic words when the speech was presented in ADS, but not in IDS. These results suggest that IDS attenuates infants' preference for trochaic stress pattern. Further acoustical analyses demonstrated that IDS provided less salient spectral cues for the contrasts between stressed and unstressed syllables in trochaic words. These findings encourage further efforts to explore the effects of IDS on language acquisition from a broader perspective.

Revisiting English word stress and rhythm in the post-nuclear domain

In English, grammatical category and word stress are often highly correlated: disyllabic nouns and verbs frequently occur with trochaic and iambic stress, respectively. Kelly and colleagues (1988,1992) suggest that this relationship was shaped by rhythm but may also be subverted by rhythm. We revisit a 1978 production study by Huss, who argued that the usual stress correlation is neutralized in postnuclear position and that acoustic differences are subject to effects of sentence rhythm. Twelve pairs of homophones were embedded in full sentences preceded by a possessive or plural noun with ultimate or penultimate stress: e.g. farms produce, farm’s produce, farmers produce, farmer’s produce. A postnuclear environment was elicited by prepending a contrastive sentence (e.g., Some say that only supermarket produce may vary in quality but also a farmer’s produce may vary in quality.) Results suggest, contra Huss, that prosodic differences between nouns and verbs persist in the postnuclear environment, despite effects of rhythm. In a mixed-effects logistic regression (N = 18), acoustic cues of syllable duration and maximum intensity were significant predictors of part of speech in nuclear and postnuclear position. We also discuss results of a perception experiment in progress using the production stimuli.

English Pronunciation Errors by Jordanian University Students

This paper presents some of the major English pronunciation errors made by Jordanian students at the University of Jordan. The corpus is designed to investigate the production of English consonants, vowels, consonant clusters, and word stress by informants. The tested consonants are /p - v - ʧ - ʤ - ŋ - ɹ - ƚ/. The tested vowels are /ɪ - ɛ - ɑ - ɔ: - oʊ - ə /. Words containing consonant clusters; square - explain or across words; best friend - ride and swim are tested for epenthetic vowels. The stress pattern is investigated in words such as isn’t- unfortunately. It is found that informants frequently confuse the following phonemes /p - ŋ - ɹ - ƚ/ with /b - nɡ - ɾ - l/ respectively. Moreover, informants frequently insert an epenthetic /ɛ/or /ɪ/ in consonant clusters whether within words; /sɪkɾi:m/ for /skɹi:m/ or across words; /bɛst ɪ fɾɛnd/ for /bɛst fɹɛnd/. Regarding vowels, informants commonly confuse the KIT-DRESS vowels produceing both as /e/. The realization of the schwa /ə/ is greatly influenced by spelling. The LOT vowel is produced similar to its RP /ɒ/ realization as [ɞ]even though most informants adopt a General American accent and should therefore produce the vowel as /ɑ/. The THOUGHT-GOAT vowel distinction is missing; both vowels are often merged as [o:]. Finally, the informants very often shift the stress pattern from its trochaic English stress pattern; /ɪ'zɪnt/ for /'ɪzɪnt/.

Asymmetric Correlations between English Verb Transitivity and Stress

n/a

The Relationship between Language Production and Verbal Short-Term Memory: The Role of Stress Grouping

This study investigates the influence of stress grouping on verbal short-term memory (STM). English speakers show a preference to combine syllables into trochaic groups, both lexically and in continuous speech. In two serial recall experiments, auditory lists of nonsense syllables were presented with either trochaic (STRONG-weak) or iambic (weak-STRONG) stress patterns, or in monotone. The acoustic correlates that carry stress were also manipulated in order to examine the relationship between input and output processes during recall. In Experiment 1, stressed and unstressed syllables differed in intensity and pitch but were matched for spoken duration. Significantly more syllables were recalled in the trochaic stress pattern condition than in the iambic and monotone conditions, which did not differ. In Experiment 2, spoken duration and pitch were manipulated but intensity was held constant. No effects of stress grouping were observed, suggesting that intensity is a critical acoustic factor for trochaic grouping. Acoustic analyses demonstrated that speech output was not identical to the auditory input, but that participants generated correct stress patterns by manipulating acoustic correlates in the same way in both experiments. These data challenge the idea of a language-independent STM store and support the notion of separable phonological input and output processes.

Attention to lexical stress and early vocabulary growth in 5-month-olds at risk for autism spectrum disorder

Typically developing infants differentiate strong–weak (trochaic) and weak–strong (iambic) stress patterns by 2months of age. The ability to discriminate rhythmical patterns, such as lexical stress, has been argued to facilitate language development, suggesting that a difficulty in discriminating stress might affect early word learning as reflected in vocabulary size. Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty in correctly producing lexical stress, yet little is known about how they perceive it. The current study tested 5-month-old infants with typically developing older siblings (SIBS-TD) and infants with an older sibling diagnosed with ASD (SIBS-A) on their ability to differentiate the trochaic and iambic stress patterns of the word form gaba. SIBS-TD infants showed an increased interest in attention to the trochaic stress pattern, which was also positively correlated with vocabulary comprehension at 12months of age. In contrast, SIBS-A infants attended equally to these stress patterns, although this was unrelated to later vocabulary size.

Recognition memory for foreign language lexical stress

This study investigated whether English speakers retained the lexical stress patterns of newly learned Spanish words. Participants studied spoken Spanish words (e.g., DUcha [shower], ciuDAD [city]; stressed syllables in capital letters) and subsequently performed a recognition task, in which studied words were presented with the same lexical stress pattern (DUcha) or the opposite lexical stress pattern (CIUdad). Participants were able to discriminate same- from opposite-stress words, indicating that lexical stress was encoded and used in the recognition process. Word-form similarity to English also influenced outcomes, with Spanish cognate words and words with trochaic stress (MANgo) being recognized more often and more quickly than Spanish cognate words with iambic stress (soLAR) and noncognates. The results suggest that while segmental and suprasegmental features of the native language influence foreign word recognition, foreign lexical stress patterns are encoded and not discarded in memory.

Native and Novel Language Prosodic Sensitivity in English-Speaking Children with and without Dyslexia

Children with reading disability and normal reading development were compared in their ability to discriminate native (English) and novel language (Mandarin) from nonlinguistic sounds. Children's preference for native versus novel language sounds and for disyllables containing dominant trochaic versus non-dominant iambic stress patterns was also assessed. Participants included second and third grade monolingual native English speakers with reading disability (N = 18) and normal reading development (N = 18). Children selected from pairs of novel, native, and nonlinguistic sounds that was more like language. Both groups discriminated disyllabic linguistic sounds (native and novel) from nonlinguistic sounds. Both groups showed preference for the dominant English trochaic stress pattern over the non-dominant iambic stress pattern. Implications for development of prosodic sensitivity in relation to reading skills and future research are discussed.

Learning about sounds contributes to learning about words: Effects of prosody and phonotactics on infant word learning

This research investigates how early learning about native language sound structure affects how infants associate sounds with meanings during word learning. Infants (19-month-olds) were presented with bisyllabic labels with high or low phonotactic probability (i.e., sequences of frequent or infrequent phonemes in English). The labels were produced with the predominant English trochaic (strong/weak) stress pattern or the less common iambic (weak/strong) pattern. Using the habituation-based Switch Task to test label learning, we found that infants readily learned high probability trochaic labels. However, they failed to learn low probability labels, regardless of stress, and failed to learn iambic labels, regardless of phonotactics. Thus, infants required support from both common phoneme sequences and a common stress pattern to map the labels to objects. These findings demonstrate that early word learning is shaped by prior knowledge of native language phonological regularities and provide support for the role of statistical learning in language acquisition.

Mapping novel labels to actions: How the rhythm of words guides infants’ learning

We investigated the effect of lexical stress on 16-month-olds’ ability to form associations between labels and paths of motion. Disyllabic English nouns tend to have a strong–weak (trochaic) stress pattern, and verbs tend to have a weak–strong (iambic) pattern. We explored whether infants would use word stress information to guide word–action associations during learning. Infants heard two novel words with either verb-like iambic stress or noun-like trochaic stress. Each word was paired with a single novel object performing one of two path actions and was tested using path-switch trials. Only infants in the iambic stress condition learned the association between the novel words and the path actions. To further investigate infants’ difficulty in mapping the trochaic labels to the actions, we conducted an additional study in which infants were given an object switch task using the trochaic labels. In this case, infants were able to associate the trochaic labels with the objects, providing further support that infants use lexical stress to guide label–referent associations. This study demonstrates that by 16months, English-learning infants have developed a bias to expect disyllabic action labels to have iambic stress patterns, consistent with native language stress patterns.

Influence of Early and Late Academic Exposure to L2 on Perception of L1 and L2 Accent

This paper explored the influence of early and late academic exposure to an L2 (English) on the perception of L1 (Bengali) and L2 (English) accent. Based on the perception of real and novel words in L1 and L2 contexts, 12 monolingual Bengali listeners and 12 monolingual Standard American English listeners judged the “nativelike” accent of 20 Bengali-English bilingual speakers (10 speakers had early and 10 had late academic exposure to an L2). In each stimulus category (i.e., real and novel), 2 words had trochaic and 2 words had iambic stress pattern. Except in the L1 novel context, speakers with early L2 exposure received higher “nativelike” accent ratings in both L1 and in L2. The two groups of bilinguals were comparable in the L1 novel context. Real words with trochaic stress pattern were perceived as more “nativelike” in both L1 and L2 contexts. The results suggest that the age of academic exposure to an L2 differentially interacts with the perception of L1 and L2 accent, and with perception based on the novelty of the stimuli. Cross-linguistic transfer alone might not always explain bilinguals’ linguistic behaviors. Active interplay of multiple social, linguistic, and physiological factors needs to be considered.