Sulpizio, Simone (2011) Converging evidence on the autonomy and abstractness of the representation of lexical stress. PhD thesis, University of Trento.
| PDF - Doctoral Thesis 876Kb |
Abstract
The experiments reported in the thesis investigate the nature of word stress and its lexical representation. Focusing on Italian, I considered two research questions: How is lexical stress represented? How does this representation intervene in perceiving or producing a word? Italian is a polysyllabic language with free-stress position: Stress may appear on one of the last three-syllables (e.g., TAvolo, ‘table’, paROla, ‘word’, coliBRI, ‘hummingbird’, capitals indicate stress) and its position is not predictable by rules. Moreover, there is a large asymmetry in the distribution of the stress patterns, with about 80% of words bearing stress on the penultimate syllable (e.g., paROla, ‘word’). On the assumption that stress is a lexical feature and that the stress pattern of a word is part of the knowledge stored in the lexicon, three studies were designed in which a priming paradigm and a visual word paradigm were used. Specifically, we investigated lexical stress in two domains, i.e., spoken-word recognition (Chapter 2) and reading aloud (Chapters 4 and 5). The results shed new light on the nature of the stored prosodic knowledge about lexical stress and on what extent processing of lexical stress is similar in spoken-word recognition and reading aloud. In synthesis, the empirical evidence indicates that lexical stress is part of the abstract prosodic knowledge stored in the lexicon: It pertains to the suprasegmental level of word representation and it is dissociable from the information pertaining to the segmental level.
Item Type: | Doctoral Thesis (PhD) |
---|---|
Doctoral School: | Psychological Sciences and Education |
PhD Cycle: | XXIV |
Subjects: | Area 11 - Scienze storiche, filosofiche, pedagogiche e psicologiche > M-PSI/01 PSICOLOGIA GENERALE |
Repository Staff approval on: | 16 Dec 2011 15:22 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page