Abstract
Prosodic variation in languages fulfills numerous roles, one of which is marking prominences. Prominence structures were shown to serve crucial functions in speech perception.
Of the four dimensions of prominence (frequency, time, intensity, spectrum), intensity is the most disputed one. The present study investigates the amplitude differences between stressed and unstressed syllables in Czech English relative to native English and native Czech.
Czech speakers of English exhibit different behaviour from the native speakers, but neither of the groups treats intensity in stressed syllables uniformly across the lexicon. The stress placement on the first syllable, which is canonical in the Czech language, does not lend any advantage to English learners for initially stressed English words.
As for the Czech polysyllabic words, the amplitude differences between stressed and unstressed syllables are smaller than in English, although not negligible, and longer words display reversed tendencies relative to shorter words.