--- abstract: "French is a language in which accent is mandatory on the last syllable of every content word. In contrast, Spanish uses accent to distinguish different lexical items (e.g., b'ebe vs beb'e). Two population of subjects were tested on the same materials to study whether such linguistic differences have an impact on the perceptual capacities of listeners. In Experiment 1, using an ABX paradigm, we find that French Subjects have a surprising deficit compared to Spanish Subjects in making accent distinctions. In Experiment 2, we find that Spanish subjects cannot ignore irrelevant differences in accent in a phoneme-based ABX task, whereas French Subjects have no difficulty at all. In Experiment 3, we replicate the basic French finding, and find that Spanish subjects benefit from redundant accent information even when phonemic information alone is sufficient to perform the task. In our final Experiment 4, we show that French subjects can hear the acoustic correlates of accent; their problem seem to arise at the level of short term memory. Implications for language-specific processing and acquisition are discussed." altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Dupoux given: E. honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Pallier given: C. honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Sebastian given: N. honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Mehler given: J. honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 1997 date_type: published datestamp: 1998-10-16 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/07/49 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 749 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_postscript.png;/749/1/vasujml.ps|/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/749/5/vasujml.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'speech perception, suprasegmental information, stress, accent, French, Spanish, phonological deafnesses, prelexical code, ABX discrimination, word final stress' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:15 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: 406-421 pubdom: FALSE publication: Journal of Memory and Language publisher: ~ refereed: TRUE referencetext: ~ relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 14 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:33:58 subjects: - cog-psy - psy-ling succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: A destressing "deafness" in French? type: journalp userid: 258 volume: 36