• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.33-38
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• 2024

The present study investigated the perceptual cues utilized by Korean L2 learners of English in recognizing lexical stress in English nonwords, with a focus on the roles of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration. Twenty-three Korean learners of English participated in a sequence recall task involving nonword stimuli under five different conditions: (1) the naturally-produced stimuli, (2) the duration-only condition, (3) the F0-only condition, (4) the duration-F0 matching condition, and (5) the duration-F0 conflicting condition. The results demonstrate that F0 is the primary cue for stress perception among Korean L2 learners, whereas duration acts as a secondary cue, particularly when F0 is unreliable or absent. These findings highlight the influence of L1 prosodic structures on L2 perception and suggest that Korean L2 learners adapt their perceptual weighting of stress based on cue availability. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of cue weighting in L2 prosodic acquisition.