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Word stress representations are language‐specific: Evidence from event‐related brain potentials
Author(s) -
Honbolygó Ferenc,
Kóbor Andrea,
German Borbála,
Csépe Valéria
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.13541
Subject(s) - psychology , stress (linguistics) , syllable , mismatch negativity , linguistics , event related potential , prosody , perception , word (group theory) , german , cognitive psychology , cognition , electroencephalography , neuroscience , philosophy
Understanding speech at the basic levels entails the simultaneous and independent processing of phonemic and prosodic features. While it is well‐established that phoneme perception relies on language‐specific long‐term traces, it is unclear if the processing of prosodic features similarly involves language‐specific representations. In the present study, we investigated the processing of a specific prosodic feature, word stress, using the method of event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) employing a cross‐linguistic approach. Hungarian participants heard disyllabic pseudowords stressed either on the first (legal stress) or on the second (illegal stress) syllable, pronounced either by a Hungarian or a German speaker. Results obtained using a data‐driven ERP analysis methodology showed that all pseudowords in the deviant position elicited an Early Differentiating Negativity and a Mismatch Negativity component, except for the Hungarian pseudowords stressed on the first syllable. This suggests that Hungarian listeners did not process the native legal stress pattern as deviant, but the same stress pattern with a nonnative accent was processed as deviant. This implies that the processing of word stress was based on language‐specific long‐term memory traces.