How deaf are French speakers to stress?
Résumé
This event-related potential study examined whether French listeners use stress at a phonological level when discriminating between stressed and unstressed words in their language. Participants heard five words and made same/different decisions about the final word (male voice) with respect to the four preceding words (different female voices). Compared to the first four context words, the target word was (i) phonemically and prosodically identical (/integral u/-/integral u/; control condition), (ii) phonemically identical but differing in the presence of a primary stress (/integral u'/-/integral u/), (iii) prosodically identical but phonemically different (/integral o/-/integral u/), or (iv) both phonemically and prosodically different (/integral o'/-/integral u/). Crucially, differences on the P200 and the following N200 components were observed for the /integral u'/-/integral u/ and the /integral o/-/integral u/ conditions compared to the /integral u/-/integral u/ control condition. Moreover, on the N200 component more negativity was observed for the /integral o/-/integral u/ condition compared to the /integral u'/-/integral u/ conditions, while no difference emerged between these two conditions on the earlier P200 component. Crucially, the results suggest that French listeners are capable of creating an abstract representation of stress. However, as they receive more input, participants react more strongly to phonemic than to stress information. (c) 2016 Acoustical Society of America.