The Influence of Written Stress Marks on Native English Speakers’ Acquisition of Russian Lexical Stress Contrasts

Introduction Russian belongs typologically to what are termed non-predictable stress languages (Altmann) or lexical stress languages (Kijak); that is, stress is not phonologically specified, but must be encoded in each word’s lexical representation. Pedagogical materials for beginning learners of Russian indicate the position of stress for virtually all words; the prevalent mechanism for this is to place an accent mark over the stressed vowel (e.g., рукá). As learners achieve greater proficiency, pedagogical materials reduce and/or discontinue the use of stress marks, thus becoming increasingly like authentic texts which employ stress marks in only a very few instances. The inclusion in some beginning materials of short texts with no stress marks and/or the discontinuation of stress marks for increasingly familiar vocabulary even at the earliest levels are strategies to increase textual authenticity, but overall, stress marks are ubiquitous in pedagogical materials. This fact suggests a belief among instructors of Russian that they are necessary for the acquisition of lexical stress, but to our knowledge there has been no empirical study of whether this is in fact the case. The goal of the present study is thus to investigate the impact of lexical stress marks on native English speakers’ acquisition of lexical stress contrasts, providing an empirical basis from which to assess the common practice of providing stress marks in Russian pedagogical materials.