Revisiting the phonetic implementation of lexical stress in Chinese ESL speakers

Abstract

This study examined the production of English lexical stress in minimal pairs by Mandarin Chinese speakers of English as a second language (ESL). Chinese ESL speakers completed a sentence‑reading task containing noun‑verb minimal pairs (e.g., CONduct vs. conDUCT ), and their productions were acoustically analysed for pitch, intensity, duration and vowel quality. Results showed that the speakers distinguished stress patterns primarily through pitch and intensity, though with small effect sizes. We also found that Chinese ESL speakers displayed a strong first‑syllable bias, and the initial syllable was consistently louder even in verbs. Duration did not significantly differ between nouns and verbs in these minimal pairs, indicating limited implementation of this acoustic correlate. Notably, there was limited evidence of vowel quality reduction to schwa, contrasting with perception studies where vowel centralisation is highly salient in stress placement decisions. These findings highlight a production‑perception mismatch and suggest that the lack of vowel reduction represents a feature of this L2 English variety. Our data also contrast with previous production studies reporting successful implementation of all acoustic cues by Chinese ESL speakers, and we discussed the differences regarding the ecological validity of elicitation method.