Prosodic prominence does not speed up word recognition in a word monitoring task with German adult speakers

Prosodically prominent accent types have been proven to facilitate word recall as well as referent identification in eye-tracking studies. In the present study, we sought to investigate whether prosodic prominence also influences on-line sentence processing. We conducted a word monitoring task with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Glossa (London) Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1 - 33
Main Authors:	Zeyer, Barbara, Penke, Martina
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Ubiquity Press 23-09-2024
Subjects:	Accentuation Eye movements German language Language Prosody Reaction time Syntactic processing Word recognition
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Prosodically prominent accent types have been proven to facilitate word recall as well as referent identification in eye-tracking studies. In the present study, we sought to investigate whether prosodic prominence also influences on-line sentence processing. We conducted a word monitoring task with 49 German speakers where either the target word or the word preceding the target word were manipulated with either high level prominent accents (L+H· L·+H), a low level prominent accent (L·), or deaccentuation (ø). Based on previous findings, we expected prosodic prominence to draw attention, hence resulting in faster recognition times when the target word carried a prominent accent. At the same time, we postulated that the processing of prosodic prominence also binds processing resources, thus leading to slower recognition times when the word preceding the target word was manipulated. Specifically, we hypothesized a scale of prosodic prominence (L+H· L·+H, L· ø) leading to a stepwise increase or decrease of recognition times in word monitoring dependent on the position of the accent (on the target word or on the word preceding the target word, respectively). While previous studies have shown that prosodic prominence facilitates both word recall and referent identification, we did not find that prosodic prominence affected reaction times in the present study. Our results suggest that, when presented without further context, prosodic prominence might not exert an effect on on-line processing in a word monitoring task.
ISSN:	2397-1835
DOI:	10.16995/glossa.244