Effects of language experience and consonantal context on perception of French front rounded vowels by adult American English learners of French.
Item
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Title
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Effects of language experience and consonantal context on perception of French front rounded vowels by adult American English learners of French.
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Identifier
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AAI3144112
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identifier
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3144112
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Creator
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Levy, Erika S.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Winifred Strange
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Cognitive | Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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According to Best's (1994, 1995) Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), the way in which listeners perceptually assimilate unfamiliar segments into their native phonology predicts how accurately they will discriminate the speech sounds. The present study applied the PAM not just to beginning language learners, but also to more experienced second language (L2) learners. Parisian French (PF) front rounded vowels /y/ and /oe/ were investigated. Three groups of American English (AE) listeners differing in their French experience (No Experience, Formal Instruction, Immersion Experience) performed a Perceptual Assimilation (PA) task involving French vowels /y-oe-u-o-i-epsilon-a/ and a Categorial Discrimination task involving French front vs. back rounded vowel pairs /y-u/, /y-o/, /oe-o/, /oe-u/, front rounded vs. front unrounded pairs /y-i/, /y-epsilon/, /oe-epsilon/, /oe-i/, and a front rounded vowel pair differing in height /y-oe/. Vowels were in bilabial /rabVp/ and alveolar /radVt/ consonantal contexts produced and presented in phrases. PF front rounded vowels /y/ and /oe/ were perceptually assimilated overwhelmingly (94%) to back AE vowels by all groups, resulting in more discrimination errors for front versus back rounded PF vowel pairs (16%) than for front unrounded versus rounded PF pairs (2%). Overall, on the experimental contrasts, listeners with formal French instruction did not fare significantly better (11% errors) than listeners with no French experience (13% errors). Extensive French immersion experience, however, was associated with significantly fewer errors (4%) than formal experience alone, although discrimination of /u-y/ remained relatively poor (12% errors) for this group. A context effect was evident in PA and discrimination; more errors were made on pairs involving front versus back rounded vowels in alveolar context (20% errors) than in bilabial context (11% errors). Acoustical analyses indicated that PF /y/ and /oe/ are front vowels, but when AE /u/ is produced in alveolar context, it is "fronted," contributing to AE listeners' perceptual difficulty in alveolar context. Such findings suggest that native-language allophonic variation may explain context-specific perceptual patterns in a non-native language. A significant correlation (rho = .87, p < .01) was found between overlap in PA responses on vowel pairs and discrimination errors for all groups, suggesting that the PAM may be extended to L2 vowel learning.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
