THE EFFECT OF NATIVE PROSODIC PROPERTIES ON THE PERCEPTIBILITY OF LEXICAL STRESS: A CROSS- LINGUISTIC EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the effect of native language (L1) prosodic properties on the perception of primary word stress. It has been previously argued that listeners whose native language does not use contrastive stress have difficulties when perceiving stress properties in a second language (L2). The main goal of conducting the experiments in this dissertation was to study in a systematic way to what extent native language and linguistic experience with prosodic properties facilitates or impedes L2 stress perception. Three experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of English lexical stress by Saudi Arabic and Mandarin Chinese advanced learners of English as well as native English speakers. Twenty-four participants performed an identification task, in which they listened to English nonce words and had to identify the stressed syllable. These words were produced by other English, Chinese, and Arabic speakers. The results revealed that, overall, the Arabic speakers have more difficulties identifying primary stress in nonce words than the English speakers. In addition, the Arabic speakers performed worse than the Chinese speakers who lack stress in their abstract representation. The findings also indicated that the weaker performance in stress perception on the part of the Arabic speakers was observed even when stress was associated with phonetic cues that are informative in Arabic or produced in a canonical stress pattern. The findings of the current study suggest that the prosodic system of the native language of the learners seems to be the most relevant indicator of their perception. Specifically, having a predictable stress system in the L1 results in its speakers being stress “deaf”. On the other hand, the absence of stress in the underlying representation does not necessary lead to stress “deafness”. The Chinese speakers did not show difficulty with the perception of stress, and rather indicated a target-like performance regardless of who produced the stimuli.