Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
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Exploring stress encoding cues in English by Korean L2 speakers

  • Goun Lee (Department of General Education, Dankook University)
  • Received : 2024.08.18
  • Accepted : 2024.09.19
  • Published : 2024.09.30
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Abstract

The present study investigated the perceptual cues utilized by Korean L2 learners of English in recognizing lexical stress in English nonwords, with a focus on the roles of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Twenty-three Korean learners of English participated in a sequence recall task involving nonword stimuli under five different conditions: (1) the naturally-produced stimuli, (2) the duration-only condition, (3) the F0-only condition, (4) the duration-F0 matching condition, and (5) the duration-F0 conflicting condition. The results demonstrate that F0 is the primary cue for stress perception among Korean L2 learners, whereas duration acts as a secondary cue, particularly when F0 is unreliable or absent. These findings highlight the influence of L1 prosodic structures on L2 perception and suggest that Korean L2 learners adapt their perceptual weighting of stress based on cue availability. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of cue weighting in L2 prosodic acquisition.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Zhen Qin for providing the acoustic stimuli and experimental setup used in this study.

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