The processing of German word stress: evidence for the prosodic hierarchy

Abstract

The present paper explores whether the metrical foot is necessary for the description of prosodic systems. To this end, we present empirical findings on the perception of German word stress using event-related brain potentials as the dependent measure. A manipulation of the main stress position within three-syllable words revealed differential brain responses, which (a) correlated with the reorganisation of syllables into feet in stress violations, and (b) differed in strength depending on syllable weight. The experiments therefore provide evidence that the processing of word stress not only involves lexical information about stress positions, but also (quantity-sensitive) information about metrical structures, in particular feet and syllables.

Rhythmic structure effects on glottalisation: A study of different speech styles in Polish and German

“…Domahs et al (2008) found evidence that the hierarchical organization of syllables and feet plays a role in word stress processing in German. In contrast, no such evidence was found for Polish (Domahs et al 2012).…”

“…Along these lines, stress rules and their sensitivity to morphological and prosodic structure are a matter of debate (cf., e.g., Wurzel 1980;Giegerich 1985;Eisenberg 1991;Vennemann 1991). One possible account of German stress is based on the assumption that the prosodic foot is a domain of stress assignment, whereby several additional rules should be postulated in order to include the variety of different stress patterns in German (Wiese 2000;Domahs et al 2008). On the other hand, according to Jessen (1999), German stress is not predictable and as such cannot predict word boundaries (cf.…”

The influence of rhythmic (ir)regularities on speech processing: Evidence from an ERP study on German phrases

“…However, ERP studies of the last few years showed that prosodic information influence auditory processing on a lexical as well as on a structural stage (e.g., Steinhauer et al, 1999;Friedrich, Kotz, Friederici, & Alter, 2004;Knaus et al, 2007;Domahs et al, 2008). Moreover, the importance of rhythm and metrics has been revealed by various studies (Magne et al, 2007;SchmidtKassow & Kotz, 2009a,b;Rothermich et al, 2010Rothermich et al, , 2012Marie, Magne, & Besson, 2011).…”

“…Liberman & Prince, 1977;Selkirk, 1984;Hayes, 1984;CouperKuhlen, 1986). Besides, German -as well as English -holds a trochaic standard pattern, i.e., metrical feet in which a stressed syllable precedes an unstressed syllable (Jessen, 1999;Domahs et al, 2008).…”

“…Hence, the stressed syllable seems to be the reference point for segmenting the speech signal into smaller units. Further support for this assumption comes from an ERP study by Domahs et al (2008) which showed that the position of the first perceived stressed syllable -rather than the destressed, originally stressed syllable -is crucial for the evaluation of words containing a stress violation. This is in line with the Metrical Segmentation Theory which states that stressed syllables guide word recognition (Cutler & Norris, 1988).…”