How Do Ukrainian Learners of German Process Lexical Stress? Evidence from Production and Perception

Area of Science:

• Phonetics and Phonology
• Second Language Acquisition
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Prosodic cues like pitch and duration signal stress and focus in spoken language.
• Understanding how second language (L2) learners produce and perceive these cues is crucial for L2 acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate prosodic cues to stress and focus in L1 Ukrainian and L2 German speakers compared to native German speakers.
• To examine the role of fundamental frequency (F0) in L2 German word recognition.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Production analysis of trisyllabic words varying in stress and focus by L1 Ukrainian, L2 German, and L1 German speakers.
• Experiment 2: Eye-tracking during online word recognition in L2 German to assess the influence of pitch contours.

Main Results:

• Stressed vowels were longer and more intense, with minimal focus or group effects on these features.
• Significant group differences emerged in F0 contours: L1 Ukrainian speakers used high initial pitch and falling pitch on stressed syllables, while L1 German speakers used rising pitch for focus.
• L2 German learners showed individual variation (Type 1: L1 Ukrainian-like; Type 2: L1 German-like F0 patterns).
• Perception data indicated that high pitch on the initial syllable influenced fixation patterns, and Type 2 learners treated high pitch as stress, impacting word recognition.

Conclusions:

• L2 German learners display individual differences in the production of stress and focus, mirroring aspects of their L1 or target language.
• Prosodic cue use in production is closely linked to cue utilization during L2 word recognition, highlighting the interplay between production and perception.