15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003


Degrees of Phonetic Similarity and Analogically-Driven Stress Perception in Spanish

Timothy L. Face

University of Minnesota, USA

This paper examines the influence of a similar real Spanish word on the perception of stress in a nonsense word, focusing on the degree of phonetic similarity between the two. Nonsense words were created and synthesized that, while similar to a real word, would be predicted to have a different stress pattern from the real word if the real word does not have an analogical effect on stress perception. The results show varying degrees of influence of the real word on the perception of stress in the nonsense words, with the degree of influence depending on the phonetic similarity of nonsense word to the real word. The results add to the understanding of the ways in which the structures of Spanish are cues to stress perception, and also lend support to recent claims that whole words stored in the lexicon are used actively through analogy by speaker/hearers.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Face, Timothy L. (2003): "Degrees of phonetic similarity and analogically-driven stress perception in Spanish", In ICPhS-15, 1723-1726.