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Abstract
While some previous research indicated that native-like performance in English lexical stress perception can be difficult for non-natives to achieve, others provided evidence for benefits from transferrable skills in processing acoustic correlates shared by stress and listeners’ L1 features. Beijing Mandarin and Changsha Xiang, two tone-featured Sinitic languages, have analogous metrical structures to English stress, but differ in their deployment of vowel reduction and syllable duration. As these features may diverge speakers’ perception of English stress, proficiency, as an insufficiently researched factor, is likely to mediate the L1 impacts. The current study thus examined how various phonetic and phonological cues are utilized by listeners from Beijing and Changsha who are variedly proficient in English. Results showed an unexpected facilitative effect of rising pitch accent on both groups, and confirmed the non-native deployment of vowel reduction and duration cues; proficiency was found to exert significant influence on Chinese listeners’ perception pattern of English stress; variation was not manifest across the two dialect groups as hypothesized, except that the prominence of duration cues in Changshanese might have contributed to Changsha listeners’ inferiority to the Beijing listeners when the duration cue was removed in the rising pitch accent condition.
Citation
Zhou, W., & You, Y. (2023, June 28). English lexical stress perception by Beijing and Changsha listeners at different proficiency levels: Support or hindrance from vowel reduction, duration, and intonation [Oral presentation]. Beijing Foreign Studies University 2023 Graduate High-End Academic Forum and the Fifth English Language and Literature Graduate Forum, June 28, Beijing, China.