The perception of Spanish lexical stress by French speakers: stress identification and time cost

The perception of lexical stress in Spanish by French speakers with and without knowledge of the language has been studied with a technique allowing the evaluation of the individual or combined effects of the acoustic parameters related to the perception of stress. Results suggest in first place that the exposure to L2 makes the French speakers more sensitive to stress. Secondly, although F0 seems to constitute the crucial cue in the identification of stress position, results point out that, when stress is accurately perceived, the time necessary to detect it is affected by manipulations involving amplitude.