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

This study examines (a) the prosodic cues to stress and focus in Ukrainian speakers in their first language (L1 Ukrainian) and in a second language (L2 German), as compared to German speakers and (b) the influence of F0 during online word recognition in L2 German. Analyses of productions of trisyllabic target words differing in stress (Experiment 1) show that stressed vowels are consistently longer and produced with slightly higher intensity than unstressed vowels, with little additional modulation by focus (focused, unfocused) and hardly any group effects (L1 Ukrainian, L2 German, L1 German). The groups differed strongly in F0 though. While L1 Ukrainian speakers produced the initial syllable with high-pitched and stressed syllables with a falling/low F0 contour (suggesting head-edge prominence marking), L1 German speakers produced focus with a rising pitch accent. There were two subgroups of learners: a small group that produced the conditions as in L1 Ukrainian (Type 1) and a larger group that was similar to L1 German (Type 2). In perception (Experiment 2), target words were fixated more when the first syllable was high-pitched (in line with L1 Ukrainian productions). Similar to Germans, Type 2 learners temporarily treated high-pitched syllables as stressed, leading to increased competitor fixations when the pitch peak preceded the stressed syllable (early-peak accent, H+L*, compared to medial-peak accents, L+H*). These findings demonstrate individual differences in the L2 production of stress and focus, which are closely linked to cue use during L2 word recognition.