Visual word stress marking and reading: The prosodic underdetermination of German script – visual enrichment as potential facilitation in reading

 

PhD project by Philip Kehl

 

Where is prosody located in the writing system of German?

The term prosody describes all characteristics of a string of sounds that are superimposed on the individual sounds. Among other things, this involves stressing of syllables. German script does not contain any direct clues as to how a word or a sentence is stressed correctly. Even when reading single words, individuals who learn to read and those with low reading skills find it difficult to stress the correct syllable (i.e. to correctly assign word stress). Assembling single sounds (often clearly coded by letters) in syllables is only one part of the process of reading. If word stress is assigned correctly, a word can also be processed more easily as lexical unit, which has positive effects on pronunciation and comprehension. 

Studies on the use of word stress markers 

A study involving adults investigated the effectiveness of different word stress markers when reading three-syllable “German” pseudowords. (Kehl et al. 2024, Poster at SSSR Copenhagen). 

Regardless of the specific type of marking, all markings examined were highly effective (≥ 88% of items were stressed on the marked syllable). However, longer reaction times compared to a control condition without marking also indicate additional cognitive processing effort.

Another study with adults examined the effectiveness of highlighting (by underlining) when reading real German three-syllable words. (Kehl et al. 2025, Talk at PAEPS Jena). 

As with reading pseudowords, this also required additional cognitive effort compared to the unmarked control condition. In addition, marking the syllable carrying the word stress requires more effort than marking another syllable. It would be worth investigating whether, after a familiarization phase, marking the “correct” syllable does have a positive effect after all. 

Outlook

Our research provides initial findings on the processing of prosodically enriched text by proficient readers of German. In the future, we plan to study groups of people who often struggle with assigning word stress correctly (children who just learn to read, adults with low reading skills, and learners of German as a foreign language).