Word Stress Patterns Research Articles

Suprasegmental Lexical Stress Cues in Visual Speech can Guide Spoken-Word Recognition

Visual cues to the individual segments of speech and to sentence prosody guide speech recognition. The present study tested whether visual suprasegmental cues to the stress patterns of words can also constrain recognition. Dutch listeners use acoustic suprasegmental cues to lexical stress (changes in duration, amplitude, and pitch) in spoken-word recognition. We asked here whether they can also use visual suprasegmental cues. In two categorization experiments, Dutch participants saw a speaker say fragments of word pairs that were segmentally identical but differed in their stress realization (e.g., 'ca-vi from cavia "guinea pig" vs. 'ka-vi from kaviaar "caviar"). Participants were able to distinguish between these pairs from seeing a speaker alone. Only the presence of primary stress in the fragment, not its absence, was informative. Participants were able to distinguish visually primary from secondary stress on first syllables, but only when the fragment-bearing target word carried phrase-level emphasis. Furthermore, participants distinguished fragments with primary stress on their second syllable from those with secondary stress on their first syllable (e.g., pro-'jec from projector "projector" vs. 'pro-jec from projectiel "projectile"), independently of phrase-level emphasis. Seeing a speaker thus contributes to spoken-word recognition by providing suprasegmental information about the presence of primary lexical stress.

Word stress assignment in German, English and Dutch: Quantity-sensitivity and extrametricality revisited

English, German, and Dutch show very similar word stress patterns, in that word stress is not fixed to a certain position within a word, but realized within the final three syllables. There is, however, no consensus on the actual stress-assigning algorithms and the role of quantity (e.g., Kiparsky 1982; Wiese 2000; Hayes 1995; Giegerich 1985, 1992; Trommelen and Zonneveld 1999a, b). Existing studies are methodologically problematic since they largely depend on convenience samples of existing words and do not test their claims with new words. Using mixed effects regression and classification trees as analytical tools, this paper presents the results of a production experiment with pseudowords and an analysis of large random samples as found in the CELEX lexical database. It is shown that stress assignment is sensitive to syllabic weight in all three languages, though in slightly different ways. The implications of these results for the metrical structure of the three languages are discussed.

Effect of maturation on suprasegmental speech processing in full- and preterm infants: A mismatch negativity study

Infants born prematurely are at higher risk for later linguistic deficits present in delayed or atypical processing of phonetic and prosodic information. In order to be able to specify the nature of this atypical development, it is important to investigate the role of early experience in language perception. According to the concept of Gonzalez-Gomez and Nazzi (2012) there is a special intrauterine sensitivity to the prosodic features of languages that should have a special role in language acquisition. Therefore, we may also assume that pre- and full-term infants having months difference in intrauterine experience show different maturation patterns of processing prosodic and phonetic information present at word level. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of these differences on word stress pattern vs. phoneme information processing. Two age groups of infants (6 and 10 month-olds) were included in our study. 21 of 46 of the total of infants investigated were prematurely born with low birth weight. We used the mismatch negativity (MMN) event related brain potential (ERP) component, a widely used electrophysiological correlate of acoustic change detection, for testing the assumed developmental changes of phoneme and word stress discrimination. In a passive oddball paradigm we used a word as standard, a pseudo-word as phoneme deviant, and an illegally uttered word as stress deviant. Our results showed no differences in MMN responses in the phoneme deviant condition between the groups, meaning a relatively intact maturation of phoneme processing of preterm infants as compared to their contemporaries. However, the mismatch responses measured in the stress condition revealed significant between-group differences. These results strengthen the view that the total length of intrauterine experience influences the time of emergence of prosodic processing.

Stress matters revisited: a boundary change experiment.

Breen and Clifton (Stress matters: Effects of anticipated lexical stress on silent reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 2011, 64, 153-170) argued that readers' eye movements during silent reading are influenced by the stress patterns of words. This claim was supported by the observation that syntactic reanalysis that required concurrent metrical reanalysis (e.g., a change from the noun form of abstract to the verb form) resulted in longer reading times than syntactic reanalysis that did not require metrical reanalysis (e.g., a change from the noun form of report to the verb form). However, the data contained a puzzle: The disruption appeared on the critical word (abstract, report) itself, although the material that forced the part of speech change did not appear until the next region. Breen and Clifton argued that parafoveal preview of the disambiguating material triggered the revision and that the eyes did not move on until a fully specified lexical representation of the critical word was achieved. The present experiment used a boundary change paradigm in which parafoveal preview of the disambiguating region was prevented. Once again, an interaction was observed: Syntactic reanalysis resulted in particularly long reading times when it also required metrical reanalysis. However, now the interaction did not appear on the critical word, but only following the disambiguating region. This pattern of results supports Breen and Clifton's claim that readers form an implicit metrical representation of text during silent reading.

Zaliznjak's Pragmatic Factor and Its Relationship to Stress Variation in Russian

In this article the validity and scope of Zaliznjak's pragmatic factor are analysed in both derived and underived words in Russian. The pragmatic factor, according to Zaliznjak, affects the stress patterns of words on the basis of their levels of assimilation, although assimilation itself remains a rather nebulous and subjective category. Frequency data, however, may be able to measure more accurately assimilation (or, vice versa, its absence) in the language. According to the theory of the pragmatic factor, assimilated underived words tend to have “non-trivial” (desinential or mobile) stress, while unassimilated words tend to have “trivial” (fixed stem) stress. For derived words the situation is slightly different: under particular conditions assimilated words tend to have suffixal stress and unassimilated words – stem stress. While Zaliznjak's conclusions regarding monosyllabic masculine nouns and short adjectives are uncontroversial and well founded, it is unclear how the pragmatic factor affects other areas of the language. Thus, the two most common types of non-trivial feminine stress paradigms consist of, for the most part, lower frequency (i.e., unassimilated) lexemes. For derived words the theory seems more spurious still as it goes against what is known empirically about the relationship between stress and suffixation. The article is in agreement with the basic premises of the pragmatic factor, but calls for more precision and closer definition of its scope.

A Spanish pilot investigation for a crosslinguistic study in protracted phonological development

A crosslinguistic study is underway concerning children’s protracted phonological development (i.e. speech sound disorders). The current article reports pilot Spanish data for this study from two 4-year-old boys with protracted phonological development. The purposes of the pilot study were to: (1) develop and evaluate a word list for elicitation that could be used across Spanish dialects and that sufficiently sampled Spanish word lengths, stress patterns, word shapes and phonemes; and (2) to derive hypotheses for the larger study, based on patterns found in these children’s speech, and a review of the literature. The two speakers showed some developmental patterns reported for other languages (e.g. constraints on production of liquids and word-initial consonants in unstressed syllables) but also patterns that may reflect Spanish phonological inventories, allophony and frequencies. These data helped consolidate the Spanish word list for elicitation and led to questions for the ongoing study concerning word structure, multisyllabic words, liquids, fricatives and vowel sequences.

THE ROLE OF EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION IN ENGLISH WORD STRESS PATTERNS IN AN EFL ARAB UNIVERSITY CONTEXT

This study presents the results of an investigation into the extent to which explicit instruction in English word stress patterns correlates with better word stress assignment performance by Palestinian EFL university students. The students received three weeks of explicit instruction in the main English word stress rules. In analyzing the differences in the pre- and post-treatment test scores, the researchers found significant increases on the post-treatment test scores which indicate a correlation between explicit instruction in word stress rules and students' performance in word stress assignment. Teaching suggestions and activities are provided to improve learners' word stress assignment performance. The results of this study are of great value to Palestinian linguists, EFL teachers and curricula developers who need to pay special attention to this often overlooked area and, therefore, to ensure that pedagogical materials and teaching activities on word stress become an integral part of EFL curricula.

English-learning infants’ perception of word stress patterns

Adult speakers of different free stress languages (e.g., English, Spanish) differ both in their sensitivity to lexical stress and in their processing of suprasegmental and vowel quality cues to stress. In a head-turn preference experiment with a familiarization phase, both 8-month-old and 12-month-old English-learning infants discriminated between initial stress and final stress among lists of Spanish-spoken disyllabic nonwords that were segmentally varied (e.g. ['nila, 'tuli] vs [lu'ta, pu'ki]). This is evidence that English-learning infants are sensitive to lexical stress patterns, instantiated primarily by suprasegmental cues, during the second half of the first year of life.

Acoustic correlates of primary and secondary stress in North American English

This study investigates the acoustic correlates of the distinction between primary and secondary stress in English in accented and unaccented morphologically complex words that are either left-prominent or right-prominent (e.g. ˈ vio | late vs. | vio ˈ lation ). In both accented and unaccented words, the position of primary and secondary stress significantly influences F0, intensity, and spectral balance. The effects are, however, much weaker for unaccented words. A model is presented which can, for accented words, very successfully distinguish the two stress patterns on the basis of pitch, intensity, duration, spectral balance in the two stressed syllables and the pitch slope in the left position. In contrast, the stress patterns of unaccented words cannot be successfully detected on the basis of the acoustic parameters. The findings strongly support an accent-based phonological account of the primary–secondary stress distinction. Primary and secondary stress syllables are not different from each other, unless the word is pitch-accented. In this case what is usually labeled the primary stress syllable becomes the target of a nuclear accent. Left-prominent accented words receive one accent, right-prominent accented words two accents.

Do newly formed word representations encode non-criterial information?

Lexical stress is useful for a number of language learning tasks. In particular, it helps infants segment the speech stream and identify phonetic contrasts. Recent work has demonstrated that infants aged 1;0 can learn two novel words differing only in their stress pattern. In the current study, we ask whether infants aged 1;0 store stress information in their representations of words even when it not required for the task. To this end, we taught infants novel, three-syllable word-object pairings. At test, we manipulated the word by presenting infants with forms that shared the stress pattern of the familiar words but differed in the segments, and forms that shared the segments of the familiar word but differed in the stress pattern. Our findings reveal that infants' representations of new words include word-level stress information and do not simply contain the information critical for distinguishing between different forms.

Computational prosodic markers for autism

We present results obtained with new instrumental methods for the acoustic analysis of prosody to evaluate prosody production by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Typical Development (TD). Two tasks elicit focal stress — one in a vocal imitation paradigm, the other in a picture-description paradigm; a third task also uses a vocal imitation paradigm, and requires repeating stress patterns of two-syllable nonsense words. The instrumental methods differentiated significantly between the ASD and TD groups in all but the focal stress imitation task. The methods also showed smaller differences in the two vocal imitation tasks than in the picture-description task, as was predicted. In fact, in the nonsense word stress repetition task, the instrumental methods showed better performance for the ASD group. The methods also revealed that the acoustic features that predict auditory-perceptual judgment are not the same as those that differentiate between groups. Specifically, a key difference between the groups appears to be a difference in the balance between the various prosodic cues, such as pitch, amplitude, and duration, and not necessarily a difference in the strength or clarity with which prosodic contrasts are expressed.

Computational prosodic markers for autism

We present results obtained with new instrumental methods for the acoustic analysis of prosody to evaluate prosody production by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Typical Development (TD). Two tasks elicit focal stress - one in a vocal imitation paradigm, the other in a picture-description paradigm; a third task also uses a vocal imitation paradigm, and requires repeating stress patterns of two-syllable nonsense words. The instrumental methods differentiated significantly between the ASD and TD groups in all but the focal stress imitation task. The methods also showed smaller differences in the two vocal imitation tasks than in the picture-description task, as was predicted. In fact, in the nonsense word stress repetition task, the instrumental methods showed better performance for the ASD group. The methods also revealed that the acoustic features that predict auditory-perceptual judgment are not the same as those that differentiate between groups. Specifically, a key difference between the groups appears to be a difference in the balance between the various prosodic cues, such as pitch, amplitude, and duration, and not necessarily a difference in the strength or clarity with which prosodic contrasts are expressed.

THE BEHAVIOUR OF STRESS PATTERN ON ENGLISH WORDS ENDING IN -IC

ABSTRACT This study was carried out to observe the word stress pattern on English words ending in – IC . It was aimed at confirming a phenomenon that there is a regular stress pattern on the group of English words above—that is the majority of those words always receive a primary stress on the penultimate syllable of the words. The background why this sort of stress pattern is worth studying is that the patterns of stress on English words are very much arbitrary so that it is quite difficult to pronounce English words with proper stress pattern. Whereas, mistakes in assigning stress on English words may cause differences in meanings which are not desired by the speaker. The type of method used in this study is inventory and descriptive. The findings of this research indicate that out of 2388 words inventorized from Macquarie Dictionary, 2361 (99%) of English words ending in – IC must be stressed on the penultimate syllable, while only 27 (0.01%) of this type of words displays a deviating stress pattern. The result of this research is quite useful for: firstly, learners of English who want to have a good degree of English pronunciation, and secondly, teachers of English in guiding their students to be able to give proper and accurate stress on English words in general and English words ending in –IC in particular. To prove whether or not students as well teachers of English, especially students of English in English Departments, have made use of the result of this research in their pronunciation, it is suggested that a research on pronunciation be conducted. Key words: stress, penultimate, syllable

Effects of prosodic familiarity on the automatic processing of words in the human brain

We aimed to determine the effect of prosodic familiarity on automatic word processing in the brain by comparing the mismatch negativity (MMN) components of the event-related brain potential (ERP) elicited by words and pseudowords with familiar and unfamiliar stress patterns. The results show that the MMN was elicited by a change from unfamiliar to familiar words and a change from a familiar to an unfamiliar word-stress pattern. When familiar words were accompanied by an unfamiliar stress pattern, the MMN response was significantly delayed in comparison with the familiar words with a familiar stress pattern, suggesting that an unfamiliar prosodic pattern increased the computational needs in word recognition but did not prevent it. In addition to the effects of familiarity on the MMN, we found a positive brain response peaking between 100 and 200 ms that could be associated with the processing of familiar auditory objects. The present results expand the understanding of the early stages of speech processing in the human brain by demonstrating how automatic word processing is affected by prosodic cues that play an important role in the segmentation of continuous speech.

Language specific prosodic preferences during the first half year of life: Evidence from German and French infants

There is converging evidence that infants are sensitive to prosodic cues from birth onwards and use this kind of information in their earliest steps into the acquisition of words and syntactic regularities of their target language. Regarding word segmentation, it has been found that English-learning infants segment trochaic words by 7.5 months of age, and iambic words only by 10.5 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Houston, D. M., & Newsome, M. (1999). The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology, 39, 159–207]. The question remains how to interpret this finding in relation to results showing that English-learning infants develop a preference for trochaic over iambic words between 6 and 9 months of age [Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A., & Redanz, N. (1993). Preference for the predominant stress patterns of English words. Child Development, 64, 675–687]. In the following, we report the results of four experiments using the headturn preference procedure (HPP) to explore the trochaic bias issue in German- and French-learning infants. For German, a trochaic preference was found at 6 but not at 4 months, suggesting an emergence of this preference between both ages (Experiments 1 and 2). For French, 6-month-old infants did not show a preference for either stress pattern (Experiment 3) while they were found to discriminate between the two stress patterns (Experiment 4). Our findings are the first to demonstrate that the trochaic bias is acquired by 6 months of age, is language specific and can be predicted by the rhythmic properties of the language in acquisition. We discuss the implications of this very early acquisition for our understanding of the emergence of segmentation abilities.

Processing Clitic Pronouns in Bulgarian — Evidence from Normal and Agrammatic Comprehension

Clitic clusters display a complicated interaction of prosodic and syntactic properties which de) termines their word order and stress patterns. In Bulgarian, short pronouns appear as unstressed verbal enclitics in positive utterances. Proclitic negation attracts the pronouns and forms with them a prosodic unit stressed on the second syllable, the pronoun. Theoretical linguistics charac) terizes the behaviour of object clitics in terms of “non)trivial chains” (Boskovic 2001) containing copies. The overt realisation of a higher or lower copy depends on phonological constraints like enclitisation requirements. In line with the slow)syntax)hypothesis (Burkhardt et al. 2008) and with the assumption that prosody)related processes may also compete for the same limited proc) essing resources of Broca’s aphasics (Avrutin et al. 1999), we test sensitivity to the phono) syntactic constraints negation imposes on the word order of personal and reflexive clitics. Results suggest that the pattern of agrammatic processing of clitic clusters resembles normal comprehen) sion but proceeds in a protracted manner. Employing a self)paced reading task and an experimen) tal design which reduces discourse)related interpretation processes, we also show that the syntac) tic functions of personal object clitics as syntactic object agreement markers in Bulgarian are relatively preserved in the aphasic group.

ERP correlates of processing native and non-native language word stress in infants with different language outcomes

The early acquisition of native language prosody is assumed to ease infants' language development. In a longitudinal setting we investigated whether the early processing of native and non-native language word stress patterns is associated with children's subsequent language skills. ERP data of 71 four- and five-month-old infants were retrospectively grouped according to children's verbal performance in a language test at 2.5 years. Children who displayed age-adequate expressive language skills later in development showed both an early and a late negative mismatch response (MMR) when processing the native language stress pattern as deviant in a passive oddball design. Children with poor language skills later in development did not show these negativities. Both groups displayed an infant-specific positive MMR to the non-native language deviant. This positivity was enhanced and prolonged in children who showed poor language skills later in development as compared to children who showed normal language skills. The results indicate that variability in expressive language development has precursors in infants' ERP correlates of word stress processing.

Timing effects of syllable structure and stress on nasals: A real-time MRI examination

The coordination of velum and oral gestures for English [n] is studied using real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) movies to reconstruct vocal tract aperture functions. This technique allows for the examination of parts of the vocal tract otherwise inaccessible to dynamic imaging or movement tracking. The present experiment considers syllable onset, coda, and juncture geminate nasals and also addresses the effects of a variety of word stress patterns on segment internal coordination. We find a bimodal timing pattern in which near-synchrony of velum lowering and tongue tip raising characterizes the timing for onsets and temporal lag between the gestures is characteristic for codas, supporting and extending the findings for [m] of Krakow [(1989). The articulatory organization of syllables: A kinematic analysis of labial and velar gestures. Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT; (1993). Nonsegmental influences on velum movement patterns: Syllables, sentences, stress, and speaking rate. In M. A. Huffman, R. A. Krakow (Eds.), Nasals, nasalization and the velum (phonetics and phonology V) (pp. 87–116). New York: Academic Press]. Intervocalic word-internal nasals are found to have timing patterns that are sensitive to the local stress context, which suggests the presence of an underlying timing specification that can yield flexibly. We consider these findings in light of the gestural coupling structures described by Goldstein and colleagues [Goldstein, L., Byrd, D., & Saltzman, E. (2006). The role of vocal tract gestural action in units understanding the evolution of phonology. In M. Arbib (Ed.), Action to language via the mirror neuron system (pp. 215–249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Goldstein, L., Nam, H., Saltzman, E., & Chitoran, I. (2008). Coupled oscillator planning model of speech timing and syllable structure. In Proceedings of the 8th phonetics conference of China and the international symposium on phonetic frontiers; Nam, H., Goldstein, L., & Saltzman, E. (in press). Self-organization of syllable structure: A coupled oscillator model. In Chitoran, Coupe, Marsico, & Pellegrino (Eds.), Approaches to phonological complexity].

Derivational Morphophonology: Exploring Errors in Third Graders' Productions

This study describes a post hoc analysis of segmental, stress, and syllabification errors in third graders' productions of derived English words with the stress-changing suffixes -ity and -ic. We investigated whether (a) derived word frequency influences error patterns, (b) stress and syllabification errors always co-occur, and (c) derived word stress pattern affects errors. A total of 1,900 productions from 81 third-grade children were transcribed and coded. The targets were 8 high-frequency (HF) and 8 low-frequency (LF) real English words and 8 nonsense (NS) derived words. Participants combined a suffix and a base word to produce a derived word. The vowel-initial suffixes required both stress and syllabic changes in a base word. Children made more segmental and stress errors on NS words than on HF and LF words, but more syllabification errors on LF words than on HF and NS words. More items among the LF words required vowel alternations than among the HF words. When syllabification was not mastered, stress was usually incorrect; however, when syllabification was correct, children often still erred on stress. Derived words that contained 2 trochaic feet were produced with fewer errors than were those that only had 1 trochaic foot. Rather than a frequency effect, a lexical effect emerged such that real words were more similar to each other for segmental and stress errors than they were to NS words. Three findings suggest that prosody plays a role in errors: Children made more suprasegmental than segmental errors, they appeared to master syllabification before stress placement, and they produced fewer errors on derived words with 2 trochaic feet than on those with only 1 trochaic foot. Although these results are preliminary, they highlight the role of prosody in morphophonology.

Impaired word stress pattern discrimination in very‐low‐birthweight infants during the first 6 months of life

Prosodic information, such as word stress and speech rhythm, is important in language acquisition, and sensitivity to stress patterns is present from birth onwards. Exposure to prosodic properties of the native language occurs prenatally. Preterm birth and an associated lack of exposure to prosodic information are suspected to affect language acquisition in preterm infants. Fifty healthy very low birthweight (<1500 g) preterm German infants (24 males, 26 females; mean gestational age [GA] 27.6 wks, range 26.4-29.9) and 103 comparison term infants (48 males, 55 females; mean GA 40 wks, range 39.4-40.8) were recruited. Prosodic discrimination performance was assessed using the head-turn preference paradigm, an objective behavioural psycholinguistic test for measuring orientation time (OT) to auditory stress patterns. Among matched preterm and term infants, preterm infants (n=30) did not differentiate stress patterns at the corrected age of 4 or 6 months. In term infants (n=30), the OT was longer towards the trochaic (stress on first syllable, characteristic for German) than the iambic (second syllable) stress patterns (11.64 vs 9.18s, p<0.001, and 11.02 vs 8.32s, p<0.001, at 4 and 6 mo respectively). Neurodevelopmental scores (Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 2nd edn) were not different from reference values in both groups of infants. Preterm birth and deficient early prosodic information affect prosodic processing during the first half year of life.