Speaker: Junshu Jin and Michael Kenstowicz (MIT)
Title: Perception of English Lexical Stress by 2nd-Language Learners
Time: Monday, February 23rd, 5pm – 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Abstract: In this presentation we briefly review two earlier studies on the perception of lexical stress contrasts in English by native Mandarin speakers. We then discuss the findings of Jin & Zheng’s (2025) study comparing the perception of English stress by three groups of speakers: native English (control), native Mandarin, and Yanbian Korean. The results indicate that native English speakers and L2 learners weight pitch cues similarly; however, they differed significantly in the weight of vowel quality and duration cues. For L2 learners, Mandarin speakers weighted vowel quality and duration cues more similarly to native English speakers, and they weighted these two cues heavier, compared to Yanbian Korean Chinese. The study provides support for the Language Transfer Theory and tests Cue-Weighting Theory with implications for L2 phonetic teaching and learning.