Stress Deafness Theory

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(Flege et al., 1995). Flege point of view is that (1995), listeners hear extraneous accents when they find deviations from phonetic norms, and accent can be caused by a number of different reasons: faulty perception; poor phonetic input; deficiency of motivation or the interaction within L1 and L2 phonological systems. L2 learners normally recognize L2 sounds with L1 sounds even if both are dissimilar acoustically. This recognition process between two languages at the perception level enables the learners to interchange L2 and L1 sounds at the moment of production. Studies manifested that enough exposure to the target language can polish learners´ perception of non‐native contrasts, proposing that adults’ phonological perception can be improve…show more content…
However two studies presents, word stress perception from two other point of views. Stress Deafness Model (SDM), Dupoux and Dupoux et al. (2001) and Peperkamp (2002) introduced a stress perception model founded on the mental representation of stress in the lexicon. Vogel and Altmann (2002) presented the Stress Typology Model (STM), which concentrates on the stress perception from the phonological property differences of different metrical systems. Stress Deafness Model Mehler and Cutler (1993) stated that prosody is vital for L1 acquisition. When children learn their L1 language, they attain the rhythm, making language acquisition less difficult and making the amendment of the perception‐ production mechanism. In adult age, the adjustment of this perception and production mechanism is not so elastic and makes L2 accomplishment tougher. Mehler et al. (1988) propose that children learn their L1 prosody before they learn segments. For example language like Spanish, stress is distinctive and differentiates minimal pairs1, speakers have to represent and process stress in order to…show more content…
Much like the SDM, this model also employs the idea of stress parameters, classifies languages according to their stress regularities and focuses only on primary stress. However, this model consists of a binary branching hierarchy according to stress or other prosodic phenomena, such as tone. Furthermore, this model works with languages with unpredictable stress and non‐stress languages. Vogel (2000) (apud Altmann, 2006) classifies languages according to their stress typology. In stress languages, stress assignment may be predictable or not. Languages with unpredictable stress must have the stress lexically specified while languages with predictable stress must have parameter settings with information about which edge of the word is relevant for stress assignment and whether the language is sensible to syllable weight or not. Non‐stress languages make use of pitch, tone or do not use this kind of information at the word level. This model predicts different degrees of difficulty in the acquisition of primary stress in the L2. Negative settings would not influence the acquisition of stress. As previously predicted by the SDM, the best performance regarding L2 stress assignment would be by speakers who have non‐stress L1 because there is no transference of
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