Abstract It is unclear whether word stress in a language is stored as part of the word or whether it is generated by a rule. We test the generativist hypothesis of lexical storage stating that only unpredictable stress is stored in long-term memory against the contrasting usage-based approach assuming that all phonetic information regardless of its (un)predictability is stored in the mental lexicon together with the word. In a correctness judgment task involving correctly and incorrectly stressed penults and antepenults, we found that incorrectly stressed penults do not evoke an N400 effect, whereas incorrectly stressed antepenults do: there is increased negativity with a peak latency around 350–600 ms from word onset. Only changes to words with exceptional stress cause lexical inhibition, hence exceptional but not default stress markers are stored in the lexicon. Additionally, differences in processing patterns between the N400 and the late positivity component window point to an integration of two stages of word processing: pre-lexical stress recognition and stress-to-meaning matching. The results of the study support the view that stress should be understood as abstract phonological information.

中文翻译：

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单词重音处理将语音抽象与词汇访问相结合——一项 ERP 研究

摘要 目前尚不清楚语言中的重音是作为单词的一部分存储还是由规则生成。我们测试了词汇存储的生成主义假设，该假设指出只有不可预测的压力才会存储在长期记忆中，而对比基于用法的方法，假设所有语音信息无论其（不可）可预测性都与单词一起存储在心理词典中。在涉及正确和错误压力倒数和前倒数的正确性判断任务中，我们发现压力不正确的倒数后不会引起 N400 效应，而压力不正确的前倒数会：负性增加，从单词开始的 350-600 毫秒左右的峰值延迟。只有对具有异常重音的单词进行更改才会导致词汇抑制，因此，特殊但不是默认的压力标记存储在词典中。此外，N400 和后期积极性组件窗口之间处理模式的差异表明文字处理的两个阶段的整合：词前重音识别和重音-意义匹配。研究结果支持这样一种观点，即重音应该被理解为抽象的语音信息。