Orthography triggers gradient weight sensitivity in non‑native stress perception

This study explores whether native Mandarin speakers, who rely on tone to infer syllable weight in their language, can use syllable weight to perceive lexical stress in European Portuguese (EP), a quantity-sensitive language where stress strongly correlates with syllable structure. Two experiments tested Mandarin speakers with no knowledge of EP on disyllabic nonce words differing in syllable weight. In Experiment 1, participants were better at identifying final stress when the final syllable was heavier. They also showed a gradient pattern: responses were most accurate for diphthongs (CVV), followed by nasal codas (CVC), and least accurate for light CV syllables. Experiment 2 confirmed the gradient effect only when orthography was present, not with auditory input alone. These results underscore the multimodal nature of L2 phonological acquisition and reveal that orthography can trigger nonnative sensitivity to phonological weight in stress perception.