{"title":"PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH LEXICAL STRESS WITH A MARKED PITCH ACCENT BY NATIVE SPEAKERS OF MANDARIN","authors":"Shu-chen Ou","doi":"10.6519/TJL.2016.14(2).1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Three perceptual experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of English lexical stress with a marked nuclear pitch accent by native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin at the phonological and phonetic levels of processing. The stimuli were English disyllabic word pairs differing only in the position of the stress and in the morphosyntactic categories (e.g., PERmit (n.) vs. perMIT (v.)), presented for identification or discrimination. The general finding is that Mandarin-speaking learners of English performed in a native-like manner in the unmarked pitch accent context but not in the marked one. Further examination of their performance in the latter context revealed that while experienced learners failed to match the stress patterns with their morphosyntactic categories in the identification task, they could categorize them in the ABX task, which suggests that they were not phonologically deaf to stress. In contrast, inexperienced learners could not do the same, presumably deaf to stress at the phonological level. Yet, their sensitivity to both within- and across-category stress differences in the AX task indicates that they did not experience stress deafness at the phonetic level.","PeriodicalId":41000,"journal":{"name":"Taiwan Journal of Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"9","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Taiwan Journal of Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.6519/TJL.2016.14(2).1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 9
Abstract
Three perceptual experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of English lexical stress with a marked nuclear pitch accent by native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin at the phonological and phonetic levels of processing. The stimuli were English disyllabic word pairs differing only in the position of the stress and in the morphosyntactic categories (e.g., PERmit (n.) vs. perMIT (v.)), presented for identification or discrimination. The general finding is that Mandarin-speaking learners of English performed in a native-like manner in the unmarked pitch accent context but not in the marked one. Further examination of their performance in the latter context revealed that while experienced learners failed to match the stress patterns with their morphosyntactic categories in the identification task, they could categorize them in the ABX task, which suggests that they were not phonologically deaf to stress. In contrast, inexperienced learners could not do the same, presumably deaf to stress at the phonological level. Yet, their sensitivity to both within- and across-category stress differences in the AX task indicates that they did not experience stress deafness at the phonetic level.
期刊介绍:
Taiwan Journal of Linguistics is an international journal dedicated to the publication of research papers in linguistics and welcomes contributions in all areas of the scientific study of language. Contributions may be submitted from all countries and are accepted all year round. The language of publication is English. There are no restrictions on regular submission; however, manuscripts simultaneously submitted to other publications cannot be accepted. TJL adheres to a strict standard of double-blind reviews to minimize biases that might be caused by knowledge of the author’s gender, culture, or standing within the professional community. Once a manuscript is determined as potentially suitable for the journal after an initial screening by the editor, all information that may identify the author is removed, and copies are sent to at least two qualified reviewers. The selection of reviewers is based purely on professional considerations and their identity will be kept strictly confidential by TJL. All feedback from the reviewers, except such comments as may be specifically referred to the attention of the editor, is faithfully relayed to the authors to assist them in improving their work, regardless of whether the paper is to be accepted, accepted upon minor revision, revised and resubmitted, or rejected.