Perception of Spanish Lexical Stress in Rising Intonationby L1 Spanish Speakers and Japanese Learners of L3 Spanish

Abstract

Japanese learners of Spanish often fail to perceive lexical stress in rising intonation contexts, although they tend to perceive stress correctly in falling intonation contexts. A perception experiment, conducted with two groups of listeners (L1 Spanish speakers and Japanese learners of L3 Spanish), revealed that the timing of the sharp f_o rise was the most important acoustic cue for both of the listener groups. Syllable duration was also found to have a positive effect on stress perception, but the effect was weaker for the Japanese listeners.