DO ENGLISH-LEARNING INFANTS USE SYLLABLE WEIGHT TO DETERMINE STRESS

A linguistic factor governing the assignment of English lexical stress is syllable weight. Heavy syllables which have either a long (tense) vowel or are closed with a consonant are heavy and automatically bear stress. Are infants sensitive to this aspect of the English stress sys tem? Previous research by Jusczyk, Cutler, and Redanz (1993) showed th at nine-month-olds listened longer to words exhibiting Strong-Weak tha n Weak-Strong stress pattern. However, they did not investigate the ro le of syllable weight in this preference. A series of three experiment s explored infants' preference for Strong-Weak versus Weak-Strong list s, but systematically manipulated the syllable weight of Strong syllab les. The results suggest that syllable weight is not a necessary compo nent of the Strong-Weak preference observed in previous studies. Rathe r it appears that infants prefer both words that begin with a Strong s yllable and Strong syllables that are heavy. Thus, the results suggest that sensitivity to surface linguistic patterns and the principles th at underlie them may be independent in early language acquisition.