Production And Perception Of English Lexical Stress By Wu Dialect Speakers

This study investigated the acoustic cues performance of Wu dialect speakers in producing and perceiving English lexical stress.Previous research reported that F0,duration and intensity are the main acoustic cues of English lexical stress.Wu dialect is one of the dialects in China and it is a tonal language.It mainly relies on F0 and duration.Based on these features,this study will explore the following questions:(1)Do Wu dialect speakers produce English lexical stress like native English speakers by utilizing F0,duration and intensity? If they do,what are the differences between Wu dialect speakers and native English speakers by utilizing F0,duration and intensity?(2)What is the relative weighting of each cue in the production of English stress for native English group and Wu dialect group?(3)Do Wu dialect speakers perceive English lexical stress like native English speakers by utilizing F0,duration and intensity? If they do,what are the differences between Wu dialect speakers and native English speakers by utilizing F0,duration and intensity?(4)What is the relative weighting of each cue in the perception of English stress for native English group and Wu dialect group?A production experiment and a perception experiment were conducted in this study.Two experiments shared the same participants: 20 Wu dialect speakers and 20 native English speakers.Each group had 10 males and 10 females.The production experiment adapted the methodology from Beckman(1986)and Fry(1995,1998).The test stimuli were constructed by 14 pairs of disyllabic words.The participants were asked to read the sentences and the words to produce English stress.The perception experiment utilized the method of Fry(1955,1958)and chose two nonsense words(nizdit and latmab)as the test stimuli.Both two experiments measured F0,duration and intensity of all participants.The results of production experiment show:(1)Both of the participants can use F0,duration and intensity to differentiate English lexical stress.Besides,Wu dialect speakers rely on more F0 and duration than native English speakers.There are differences between two groups in using three acoustic cues.(2)The ranking order for Wu dialect speakers is duration > pitch > intensity,while the ranking order for native English speakers is duration>pitch> intensity.The results of perception experiment show:(1)Both of the participants can use F0,duration and intensity to perceive English lexical stress.Moreover,Wu dialect speakers use more F0 than native English speakers.There are differences between two groups in using three acoustic cues.(2)The ranking order for Wu dialect speakers is pitch > duration > intensity,while the ranking order for native English speakers is pitch > intensity >duration.These results conform partly to the experiment hypotheses and can be explained in virtue of Language transfer,the Stress Typology Model and the Automatic Sensitive Perception Model.