Language experience and consonantal context effects on perceptual assimilation of French vowels by American-English learners of French

Abstract

Recent research has called for an examination of perceptual assimilation patterns in second-language speech learning. This study examined the effects of language learning and consonantal context on perceptual assimilation of Parisian French ͑PF͒ front rounded vowels /y/ and /oe/ by American English ͑AE͒ learners of French. AE listeners differing in their French language experience ͑no experience, formal instruction, formal-plus-immersion experience͒ performed an assimilation task involving PF /y, oe, u, o, i, , a/ in bilabial /rabVp/ and alveolar /radVt/ contexts, presented in phrases. PF front rounded vowels were assimilated overwhelmingly to back AE vowels. For PF /oe/, assimilation patterns differed as a function of language experience and consonantal context. However, PF /y/ revealed no experience effect in alveolar context. In bilabial context, listeners with extensive experience assimilated PF /y/ to / j u/ less often than listeners with no or only formal experience, a pattern predicting the poorest /u-y/ discrimination for the most experienced group. An "internal consistency" analysis indicated that responses were most consistent with extensive language experience and in bilabial context. Acoustical analysis revealed that acoustical similarities among PF vowels alone cannot explain context-specific assimilation patterns. Instead it is suggested that native-language allophonic variation influences context-specific perceptual patterns in second-language learning.

The Effects of L2 Experience and Vowel Context on the Perceptual Assimilation of English Fricatives by L2 Thai Learners

“…Results of this study contribute to previous studies showing that the perceived similarity of L2 sounds to the L1 categories does not occur in a context-independent manner (e.g., Levy, 2009;Strange, Akahane-Yamada, Kubo, Trent, & Nishi, 2001). Even in the shared L2 sounds where each of them was classified as the sounds represented with the same IPA symbols, the degree of the perceived similarities in each pair is affected by the vowel context and language experience.…”

“…Their findings showed that L2 learners assimilated the non-native sounds to their closest L1 categories. In addition, the perceived similarity between L1 and L2 sounds is context-dependent as shown by many studies For example, Levy (2009) examined the effects of L2 experience and consonantal context on the perceptual assimilation of Parisian French (PF) /y/ and /oe/ by American English learners. The listeners were divided into three groups: no experience (NoExp), formal instruction (ModExp) and formal-plus-immersion experience (HiExp).…”

Production of phonetic and phonological contrast by heritage speakers of Mandarin

“…In other words, they may have simply been drawing upon vowel tokens that were already in their repertoire: particularly fronted versions of English /u/. It has been proposed that due to the fact that American English /u/, which is already relatively front on average, is further fronted in the context of alveolars, the front vowel /y/ may not actually constitute a "new" vowel for English-speaking L2 learners, but instead a "similar" vowel, at least in the context of alveolars (Strange et al, 2007;Levy, 2009;Levy and Law, 2010). Documented perceptual assimilation patterns in which English speakers identify German and French /y/ as closest to English /u/ (e.g.…”

Investigations on the balloon as an impulse source

“…The 240 isolated vowels were extracted from the 20 speakers' first production of /s/-vowel-/s/ words reported in Adank et al (2004). We chose to present participants with isolated vowels to avoid the effect of consonantal context on perceptual assimilation patterns, which has been found in many recent studies (for a review, see Levy, 2009). Figure 1 shows the average F1 and F2 values for the female and male Peruvian Spanish vowel productions reported in Chládková et al (unpublished) and the average F1 and F2 values of the Dutch stimuli.…”