Word stress representations are language-specific: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Abstract

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 (EDN) and a Mismatch Negativity (MMN) 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 non-native accent was processed as deviant. This implies that the processing of word stress was based on language-specific long-term memory traces.

A kognitív idegtudomány elmúlt 30 éve

“…A nyelvhez kötött ingerekkel kapcsolatos kutatás kezdeti témája az EN eltérő érzékenysége volt a fonémák nyelvi rendszerének eltérése függvényében (Winkler és mtsai, 1999), és máig is kutatott témaként a nyelvekre jellemző hangsúly automatikus észlelése, valamint ennek fejlődése Csépe Valéria és Honbolygó Ferenc vezetésével (pl. Honbolygó, Kóbor, German és Csépe, 2020a). A kutatások egy másik iránya Winkler István vezetésével az EN mögött álló emlékezeti rendszer sajátságait és funkcióját vizsgálta, kimutatva, hogy e rendszer képes szabályosságok különböző szintjeit detektálni, a rendszer plasztikus, befolyásolják hosszabb tartamú emlékezeti reprezentációk.…”

Processing of Grammatical Agreement in the Face of Variation in Lexical Stress: A Mismatch Negativity Study

“…That lexical familiarity indeed interacts with the processing of lexical stress is suggested by MMN studies in Hungarian, also a fixed-stress language with word-initial stress. When testing pseudowords only, Honbolygó and Csépe (2013) found that the deviant with an illegal stress pattern elicited an MMN, whereas the deviant with a legal stress pattern did not (see also Honbolygó et al, 2020). In contrast, in a follow-up study using real words, MMNs were elicited by both legally and illegally stressed words (Garami et al, 2017).…”