A cross-linguistic study of lexical stress shifts in level 1 [+cyclic] derivations

Abstract

Laboratory phonology has been widely employed to understand the interactional relationship between the acoustic cue of English Lexical Stress (ELS) -duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity. However, research on ELS production in polysyllabic words is limited, and cross-linguistic research in this domain even more so. Hence, the impacts of second language (L2) experience and first language (L1) background on ELS acquisition have not been fully explored. This study of one-hundred adult Mandarin (Chinee), Arabic (Saudi Arabian) and English (Midwet American) speakers examine their ELS productions in tokens containing seven different stress-moving suffixe; i.e., Level 1 [+ cyclic] derivations according to lexical phonology. Speech sample were systematically analyzed using Praat and compared using statistical sampling. Native-speaker productions provided norm value for cross-reference to yield insights into the proposed Salience Hierarchy of the Acoustic Correlate of Stress (SHACS). The author recently reported the main findings which support the idea that SHACS exists in L1 sound scheme, and that native-like command of thee systems can be acquired by L2 learners through increased L2 input. Other reults are expected to reveal the role of tonic accent shift, the idiosyncrasie of individual suffixe, conflicts with standard dictionary pronunciations, and effects of frequency perception scales on SHACS.