Effects of native language on the use of segmental and suprasegmental cues to stress in English word recognition: An eye-tracking study Free

This study investigates whether the presence of lexical stress in the native language (L1) determines second-language (L2) learners’ ability to use stress in L2 lexical access. It focuses on (standard Mandarin) Chinese and (Seoul) Korean listeners’ (and native English listeners’) use of segmental and suprasegmental cues to stress in English word recognition. Stress placement in English is signaled by segmental (vowel reduction) and suprasegmental (fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity) cues. Chinese has full-full and full-reduced words that differ in stress placement, with segmental and suprasegmental cues signaling stress. By contrast, Korean does not have lexical stress. Participants completed an eye-tracking experiment. They heard stimuli containing a target word with initial stress (parrot), and saw four orthographic words in the display, including the target and one of two competitors (stress match: parish; stress mismatch: parade). The first syllable of the target and stress-mismatch competitor differed in both segmental and suprasegmental information (parrot-parade) or only in suprasegmental information (mystic-mistake). Growth-curve analyses on fixations revealed that only Chinese and English listeners used stress to recognize English words, confirming L1 effects on the use of stress in L2 lexical access. Furthermore, only English listeners made greater use of stress in the presence of vowel reduction.