Implicit knowledge of lexical stress rules: Evidence from the combined use of subjective and objective awareness measures

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in the phenomenon of learning without intention, the incidental learning of phonological features, especially prosodic features, has received relatively little attention. This paper reports an experiment on incidental learning of lexical stress rules, and investigates whether the resultant knowledge can be unconscious, abstract, and rule based. Participants were incidentally exposed to a lexical stress system where stress location of a word is mainly determined by the final phoneme, syllable type, and syllable weight. Learning was assessed by a pronunciation judgment task. Results indicate that participants were able to transfer their knowledge of stress patterns to novel words whose final phoneme was not previously encountered, suggesting that participants had acquired abstract and potentially rule-based knowledge. The combined use of subjective and objective measures of awareness in the present study provides a strong piece of evidence of the acquisition of implicit knowledge.

Why Are Lexical Tones Difficult to Learn?

“…This hypothesis was tested with an experiment on the incidental learning (i.e., learning without intention) of tone-segment connections (constraints by segmental composition on the possible tone a given syllable can carry), which hinges on the encoding of pitch patterns as abstract tone categories at the syllable level. By contrast, the extent to which second language acquisition (SLA) involves incidental learning or even implicit learning (i.e., learning without awareness) remains controversial (see Andringa and Rebuschat, 2015; Chan and Leung, 2018; Hulstijn and Ellis, 2005 for a review). An area of inquiry regarding incidental/implicit language learning lies in determining the scope of the adult capacity in acquiring knowledge of L2 language patterns without intention and/or awareness.…”

“…It has been argued that the implicit/incidental learning mechanisms, often postulated as domain-general, play a fundamental role in various social behaviors and everyday situations, including first language acquisition (Reber, 1993). Still, the extent to which incidental/implicit learning mechanisms are involved in SLA remains controversial (see Andringa and Rebuschat, 2015; Chan and Leung, 2018; Hulstijn and Ellis, 2005 for a review). A major line of research on incidental/implicit language learning thus lies in determining the scope of the adult capacity in acquiring knowledge of L2/novel language patterns without intention and/or awareness.…”

“…Warker and Dell (2006) showed a similar incidental learning effect of second-order phonotactic constraints (e.g., if the vowel is [æ], [g] must occur as an onset and [k] as a coda, but if the vowel is [ɪ], [k] must occur as an onset and [g] as a coda). In the prosodic domain, recent studies have provided evidence that implicit knowledge of novel stress patterns (Chan and Leung, 2014, 2018; Graham and Williams, 2018) may be acquired through incidental exposure. This raises the possibility of acquiring implicit knowledge of other prosodic patterns incidentally/implicitly, and renders the possibility of acquiring implicit knowledge of tone-segment connections through incidental exposure a theoretically interesting research question.…”

“…A further question in implicit/incidental learning research concerns the nature of the resultant knowledge: specifically, whether incidental/implicit learning may lead to abstract implicit knowledge (see Chan and Leung, 2018 for a detailed discussion). Implicit knowledge refers to the unconscious knowledge that one is unaware of possessing, while explicit knowledge the conscious knowledge that one is aware of possessing and may be able to verbalize (Hulstijn & Ellis, 2005).…”

Incidental and explicit learning of L2 derivational morphology and the nature of acquired knowledge

“…A growing body of research has investigated what aspects of a L2 can be learned incidentally, including form-meaning mappings (Hama & Leow, 2010;Kerz, Wiechmann, & Riedel, 2017;Leung & Williams, 2011, 2012Rebuschat et al, 2015;Williams, 2005), word order (Grey et al, 2014;Rebuschat & Williams, 2012;Ruiz, Tagarelli, & Rebuschat, 2018;Tao & Williams, 2018;Williams & Kuribara, 2008), case marking (Brooks & Kempe, 2013;Grey et al, 2014;Robinson, 2005;Rogers, 2017Rogers, , 2019Rogers et al, 2016), verb meaning (Paciorek & Williams, 2015), and phonological stress patterns (Chan & Leung, 2018;Graham & Williams, 2016). These studies have examined learning under incidental learning conditions and the conscious status of the resultant knowledge after incidental exposure (i.e., the product of learning).…”