Identification of English Primary Stress and Bias toward Strong Word-initial Syllables: Native vs. Japanese Listeners

Identification of English primary stress in trochaic and iambic words was compared between English native listeners and Japanese listeners in an environment where the two stress patterns were not distinguished by pitch while other acoustic contrasts were kept intact. Native listeners and Japanese listeners showed opposite response patterns when the pitch pattern of the stimuli was made into flat: native listeners preferred more word-initial primary stress while Japanese listeners preferred more word-final primary stress. English listeners’ preference for word-initial stress can be accounted for by a language-specific factor, i.e., the most probable stress pattern in their native language vocabulary. On the other hand, Japanese listeners’ result can be explained that they are so sensitive to F0 information that they even interpret the flat contour as carrying an informative cue for prominence difference between the two syllables by assuming the presence of “declination”.