Perception of Phrase Boundaries and Prominent Syllables in German

This study concerns the perception of boundaries and accented syllables by native German subjects as compared to Chinese non-speakers and learners of the language at different proficiency levels. To this effect six-syllable sequences excised from a context of three polysyllabic words of German were presented to participants who had to select the syllables they perceived as accented, as well as the locations of word boundaries. Results show that Germany native subjects perform well at the word boundary task, but mark correctly less than two thirds of accent syllables. Chinese non-learners still detect 70% of word boundaries and 46% of accent syllables. Learners of German with the exception of a small group of advanced students after year 5 who performed even better than the native subjects – show growing improvement with respect to word boundaries, but mark even fewer accent syllables than the non-learners. Correlation analysis of factors for syllable and boundary selection performed for non-learners and German subjects as expected shows considerably different behaviors. Whereas the boundary location does not influence the Germans’ decision on the accent location, Chinese non-learners show a preference to mark an accent when the syllable is followed by a word boundary.