sulpizio, s. 1 & mcqueen, j. 2, 3, 4
1 Department of Cognitive and Education Sciences, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
2 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Center for Cognition, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
4 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
During spoken-word recognition, we match the acoustic information in the signal with stored word knowledge. A current debate is on what knowledge is stored and how abstract it is. We ask whether listeners have abstract knowledge about lexical stress and whether they can use it during recognition of newly-learned words. Italian three-syllable words offer an interesting case, because of their asymmetrical stress-pattern distribution: 80% bear stress on the penultimate syllable. Do Italians know which acoustic cues determine stress, and do they exploit this asymmetrical distribution during word recognition? Italian participants learned to associate non-objects to non-words. Non-object’s names formed minimal pairs that were segmentally identical but differed in stress location (e.g., TOlaco-toLAco). In the learning phase, participants heard acoustically-manipulated versions of the non-words, in which we had neutralized two stress cues (amplitude and duration). In the test phase, participants heard both manipulated and natural versions of the non-words. During the test, four non-objects were displayed (the minimal pair plus a distractor pair). Participants heard a non-object’s name and had to identify it. Eye-movements were recorded. Fixations proportions on targets (e.g.,TOlaco), competitors (toLAco) and distractors during the first two syllables were analyzed. Stress pattern (penultimate-antepenultimate) and acoustic version of the target (manipulated-natural) were factors. Listeners looked more frequently at the penultimate-stress targets (i.e., those with the most common stress pattern) than at the antepenultimate-stress targets. Moreover, they looked more at targets, but only those with antepenultimate stress, when they heard (novel) natural (all-cue) versions than when they heard (familiar) manipulated versions. Italian listeners appear to have abstract knowledge about lexical stress (the amplitude and duration patterns of antepenultimate-stress words) and to be able to use this suprasegmental knowledge during spoken-word recognition. They also know about the asymmetrical distribution of stress in Italian; they appear to recognize penultimate-stress words by default.