Word-level prominence and “stress deafness” in Maltese English bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigates “stress deafness” in bilingual speakers of Maltese and Maltese English. Although both reportedly have lexical stress, the acoustic cues to prominence appear to be relatively weak. Further, word-initial pitch peaks make pitch an unreliable cue to lexical stress, which can be elsewhere in the word. In a sequence recall task, we show that speakers dominant in Maltese exhibit a classic “stress deafness” effect, similar to speakers of French. Speakers who identify as balanced or Maltese English dominant have more diverse results and do not show such a strong tendency towards “stress deafness”. These speakers may rely on their exposure to other varieties of English to identify (and recall) word prominences. This study suggests that the nature of stress in Maltese might need to be revisited.