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

Barcelona, Spain
August 3-9, 2003

The Perception of Lexical Stress in Spanish

Joaquim Llisterri, María Machuca, Carme de la Mota, Montserrat Riera, Antonio Ríos

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

As in other languages, stress in Spanish is signalled by three simultaneous acoustic cues: fundamental frequency (F0), duration and intensity. In this experiment, the role of these parameters in the perception of lexical stress in isolated words has been studied using natural resynthesised speech. Results show that the F0 contour alone is not enough to allow the identification of the stressed syllable of a word. However, in combination with duration, intensity or both duration and intensity, F0 is a relevant acoustic cue for the perception of lexical stress. On the other hand, intensity and duration, either combined or in isolation, are not sufficient for the identification of the stressed syllable within a word.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Llisterri, Joaquim / Machuca, María / Mota, Carme de la / Riera, Montserrat / Ríos, Antonio (2003): "The perception of lexical stress in Spanish", In ICPhS-15, 2023-2026.