Not all word stress errors are created equal: Validating an English Word Stress Error Gravity Hierarchy

Richards, Monica Grace

doi:10.31274/etd-180810-5628

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(237 reference statements)

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“…An additional issue with non-linear data transformation is that while it can address questions of rank order, it cannot resolve questions about relative degree of impact (Whelan, 2008;Lo and Andrews, 2015) since, for example, the square root of 25 is 5, of 16 is 4, and of 9 is 3 (i.e., non-linear transformation can render nonequidistant values equidistant). Details of all non-linear data transformations attempted are available from the dissertation of this study's first author (Richards, 2016). Because this study's research questions are not so much about how L1 listeners and L2 listeners perform in relation to each other, but rather about how each group's performance compares to the predictions of our hypothesized English Word Stress Error Gravity Hierarchy, the current paper reports ANOVA analysis of the untransformed L1 and L2 listener groups' data separately.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within a comfortable private cubicle, each was interviewed using an extensive Language Background Questionnaire addressing questions about their child and teenage language experience, about their English-language-learning experience and current daily English usage and proficiency, and about any L3 or L4 languages, etc. (see Richards, 2016, for the full questionnaire). Upon the interviewer initiating the experiment and the leaving the cubicle, the participant read: "In this experiment, you will hear a series of correctly and incorrectly pronounced English words.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Jenkins (2000, p. 39) is right in saying that comprehensive analysis of all possible English word stress rules and their exceptions is "far too complex for mental storage by students and teachers alike." However, it is not necessary to teach the full system since a relatively small number of word stress rules cover most academic English vocabulary (Murphy and Kandil, 2004;McCrocklin, 2012;Richards, 2016). As a result, materials developers and teachers of need to know specific underlying word stress patterns which facilitate perception and production of standard English word stress patterns for known and novel words (Nation, 2001;Aitchison, 2012;Cutler, 2012).…”

Section: Teaching Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English

Ghosh

Levis

2021

Front. Commun.

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The use of suprasegmental cues to word stress occurs across many languages. Nevertheless, L1 English listeners' pay little attention to suprasegmental word stress cues and evidence shows that segmental cues are more important to L1 English listeners in how words are identified in speech. L1 English listeners assume strong syllables with full vowels mark the beginning of a new word, attempting alternative resegmentations only when this heuristic fails to identify a viable word string. English word stress errors have been shown to severely disrupt processing for both L1 and L2 listeners, but not all word stress errors are equally damaging. Vowel quality and direction of stress shift are thought to be predictors of the intelligibility of non-standard stress pronunciations—but most research so far on this topic has been limited to two-syllable words. The current study uses auditory lexical decision and delayed word identification tasks to test a hypothesized English Word Stress Error Gravity Hierarchy for words of two to five syllables. Results indicate that English word stress errors affect intelligibility most when they introduce concomitant vowel errors, an effect that is somewhat mediated by the direction of stress shift. As a consequence, the relative intelligibility impact of any particular lexical stress error can be predicted by the Hierarchy for both L1 and L2 English listeners. These findings have implications for L1 and L2 English pronunciation research and teaching. For research, our results demonstrate that varied findings about loss of intelligibility are connected to vowel quality changes of word stress errors and that these factors must be accounted for in intelligibility research. For teaching, the results indicate that not all word stress errors are equally important, and that only word stress errors that affect vowel quality should be prioritized.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Teaching Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English

Ghosh

Levis

2021

Front. Commun.

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“…The findings also suggested that target words with word stress errors were significantly more intelligible to Turkish listeners. According to Field (2005) and Richards (2016), stress errors shifted incorrectly to a syllable on the right in a word have a more detrimental effect on intelligibility; however, Turkish listeners were not affected by the misplacement of word stress by Turkish talkers, which could likely be due to the syllable-timed nature of Turkish.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit for Turkish Speakers of English

Uzun

2022

Dil Eğitimi Ve Araştırmaları Dergisi

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This study is aimed at investigating the Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit (ISIB) via native English and Turkish listeners’ transcriptions of Turkish talkers’ words with pronunciation errors in English. Speech samples collected from talkers with a Turkish L1 background (N=16) were presented to 33 L1 English and 33 L1 Turkish listeners via an instrument to be filled with the transcriptions of erroneous target words. Results supported matched ISIB for listeners as Turkish talkers were more intelligible to Turkish listeners in a considerably higher number of target words. Similarly, a higher number of target words were more intelligible to Turkish listeners with statistically significant differences. Most of these words had been labelled erroneous due to L1 transfer caused by orthographic interference, mispronunciations of English sounds that do not exist in Turkish, and loanwords found in similar forms in Turkish. Turkish listeners appeared to rely on such cues in Turkish talkers’ speech.

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“…The thirteen instances of a lexical stress shift that were implicated in misunderstandings were placed into an error gravity hierarchy proposed by Richards (2016) as seen in Table 4. The hierarchy combines both Field's (2005) suggestion that rightward shifts in stress are more problematic than leftward, and Cutler's (2015) proposal that a change in vowels may be the key issue in word stress misunderstandings.…”

Section: Rq2: Misunderstood Innovative Lexical Stressmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Lexical Stress in English as a Lingua Franca in Southeast Asia

Lewis

2022

Virtual PSLLT

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The role of lexical stress for intelligibility in English as a lingua franca settings (ELF) has been debated. Some scholars argue that lexical stress is unnecessary for international intelligibility, yet others contend that it remains important. Moreover, the discussion of unexpected lexical stress is usually limited to directional shifts, but it should also include other types of innovations. To further investigate the role of lexical stress in ELF interactions, a corpus was collected involving 41 speakers from nine countries in Southeast Asia as they described two sets of discuss-the-difference tasks specifically designed to encourage the production of polysyllabic words. The findings demonstrate that even though innovative word stress was generally intelligible in these interactions, unexpected word stress was still implicated in 24 tokens of misunderstanding. These misunderstandings reveal that deletions of a syllable and shifts in stress with concomitant changes in vowel quality affect intelligibility the most in this ELF context. Intelligible innovations in this corpus demonstrate that equal stress and shifts in lexical stress which do not involve vowel changes rarely hamper intelligibility. Therefore, pronouncing expected syllable patterns and retaining vowel quality while stressing words in ELF interactions in Southeast Asia may enhance intelligibility.

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Not all word stress errors are created equal: Validating an English Word Stress Error Gravity Hierarchy

Cited by 5 publications

References 67 publications

Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English

Vowel Quality and Direction of Stress Shift in a Predictive Model Explaining the Varying Impact of Misplaced Word Stress: Evidence From English

The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit for Turkish Speakers of English

The Role of Lexical Stress in English as a Lingua Franca in Southeast Asia

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