Limits of Cantonese advantage on English stress discrimination: Rising pitch accent pattern and vowel reduction

Can non-natives outperform natives on speech discrimination? Surprisingly, Cantonese listeners discriminated English stress more accurately than English listeners did. To ascertain its generalizability, I further asked whether this Cantonese advantage on English stress discrimination was equally potent across pitch accent and vowel reduction contexts. Sixty Cantonese and English listeners completed four blocks of English stress discrimination task with varying pitch accent and vowel reduction contexts. In the absence of rising pitch accent pattern and vowel reduction, the Cantonese listeners outperformed the English listeners on discriminating English stress. However, the Cantonese advantage disappeared when either rising pitch accent pattern or vowel reduction was present. When both rising pitch accent pattern and vowel reduction were present, the Cantonese listeners even performed poorer than the English listeners did. The findings underscore two constraints of the Cantonese advantage on English stress discrimination—rising pitch accent pattern and vowel reduction.