Perception of lexical stress and sentence focus by Korean/Spanish learners of English.

Abstract

The current study investigates to what extend the phonological features of a L1 influences the perception of prominence in a L2. Considering that Spanish has word-level-stress and Korean has phrasal accent, we examined how these two different L2 groups of English process English lexical stress and sentence focus differently. 16 Spanish learners of English and 15 Korean learners of English completed a lexical stress and a sentence focus oddity test. The results revealed that having lexical stress and phrasal accent in the L1 facilitates the acquisition of L2 prominence.