The role of orthographic cues to lexical stress in word recognition: a comparison of monolinguals and bilinguals

The present research tested the claim that users are guided by orthographic correlates of lexical stress even in languages without diacritic markers of stress. Given that disyllabic English nouns typically have a trochaic stress pattern (strong-weak) whereas verbs tend to have an iambic pattern (weak-strong), as in REject and reJECT, respectively, the study examined whether word endings reliably signal stress and syntactic category information in English. The study also examined if sensitivity to orthographic cues to stress and syntactic category differs as a function of language experience (monolingual vs. bilingual). Twenty two monolinguals and 18 bilinguals were given a list of disyllabic English pseudowords containing 16 noun-like endings, 16 verb-like endings, and 16 neutral control endings. Corroborating a previous finding with monolinguals (Kemp, Nilsson, & Arciuli, 2009), the results showed that pseudowords containing noun-like endings were reliably perceived to be nouns whereas those with verb-like endings were reliably classified as verbs. This overall pattern also characterized bilinguals’ performance, although monolinguals were found to be significantly more sensitive than bilinguals to noun-like endings. In addition, monolinguals displayed higher overall confidence than bilinguals in their word class judgments. With respect to stress assignment, monolinguals were more likely to assign stress to the first syllable for words with noun-like or control endings, and to assign stress to the second syllable for words with verb-like endings. They also showed significantly greater first syllable stress assignment than bilinguals for pseudowords with noun-like endings. Bilinguals’ stress assignment pattern did not vary by word ending type. Taken together, the findings indicate that whereas orthographic cues are used by monolinguals and bilinguals alike to signal word class, these cues are not relied on to the same extent by the two groups for determining lexical stress. Bilinguals’ knowledge of stress patterns in another language may have contributed to their lack of sensitivity to orthographic cues of word class in making stress assignment decisions for English pseudowords. Implications of these findings and directions for further inquiry are suggested.