The influence of syllable number and task-related attention on the perception of rhythmic irregularities: An ERP study on German compounds

The present paper explores the processing of rhythmic irregularities in the form of so-called stress clashes in German noun compounds. This type of rhythmic irregularity has been found to be problematic as it induces higher costs in language processing. Moreover, the number of syllables in rhythmically irregular structures seems to play an important role for their correct perception. The present study thus concentrates on the influence of syllable number and task-relatedness and presents data from two ERP experiments. Their results show that stress clashes are only detectable if attention is clearly directed towards the prosodic structure, or if the words contain an even number of syllables and thus a preferred binary structure of prosodic feet.