ASA'09 Cross Language Perception Tremblay & Kamiyama

Perception of L2 production by L1 speakers of different dialectal backgrounds: the case of Japanese-speaking learners' /u/ perceived by French and Quebec native speakers

Marie-Claude Tremblay1, Takeki Kamiyama2

1. Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa 2. Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (UMR 7018), CNRS / Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris

Takeki.Kamiyama@univ-paris3.fr

Research questionDo native listeners of French from France and Quebec judge French /u/ pronounced by Japanese-speaking learners differently?

Answer suggested by the present studyYes, to some extent (tokens with F2 between 1000-1100 Hz).

French /u/ [uuuu] and Japanese /u/ [ɯɯɯɯ]

French /u/ (Wioland 1991) Japanese /u/ (Uemura 1990)

French /u/ [u]Native speakerNative speaker JapaneseJapaneselearnerlearner

F1/F2

Acousticallycentral (evenlydistributedformants)

F2 > 1000 Hz

•/u/ pronounced by a male native speaker.

•/u/ pronounced by a male Japanese-speaking learner.

•Relative intensity in 3 frequency zones (0-1 kHz, 1-2 kHz, 2-3 kHz) of /u/ pronounced by 4 native speakers (fr: mean of 12 tokens) and by 3 Japanese-speaking learners (jp: meanof 6 tokens). The error bars represent ±1SD.

HypothesisQuebec listeners judge Japanese-speaking learners’ /u/, pronounced with higher F2 (> 1000 Hz) as better exemplars of /u/ than French listeners.

Quebec FrenchHigh vowels /i y u/ have lax allophones [ɪɪɪɪ ʊʊʊʊ ʏʏʏʏ] in closed syllables («soupe» /sup/ [sʊʊʊʊp]).

F2

F1F1

[ʊʊʊʊ][ʊʊʊʊ]

6 male speakers 6 female speakers

Parisian French: 10 oral vowels and 3 nasal vowels

Tokyo Japanese: 5 vowels

F1 (y-axis) and F2 (x-axis) of the five vowels (male voice) of Tokyo Japanese (Sugito1995).

Experiment: perception testStimuli

F1/F2 F2 > 1000 Hz

•French vowels /u y ø/ in isolation.

•Carrier sentence: “Je dis/V/ commedans…” (e.g. Je dis/u/ comme dans“loup” ).

•5 Japanese-speaking learners (JSL: 3 male and 2 female) studying French in Tokyo.

•18 tokens x 3 vowels x 4 repetitions.

Listeners• 16 native listeners of French fromFrance.• 16 native listeners of French fromQuebec.

Protocol• Identification: multiple forcedchoice (10 oral and 4 nasal vowels of French).• Rating: 1-5 (good exemplar or not?).

Results: identification

F2

16 French listeners

F2

16 Quebec listeners* *

F2

Results: identification x rating of /u/ reponses16 French listeners

** *

F2

16 Quebec listeners

•L. Ostiguy, R. Sarrasin, G. Irons, Introduction à la phonétique comparée : les sons : le français et l'anglais nord-américains,Sainte-Foy, Les Presses de l'UniversitéLaval (1996)

•M. Sugito, Ôsaka - Tôkyô akusento onsei jiten CD-ROM: kaisetsuhen(CD-ROM Accent dictionary of Spoken Osaka and Tokyo Japanese), Tokyo, Maruzen (1995)

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•J. Vaissière, "Area functions and articulatory modelingas a tool for investigating the articulatory, acoustic and perceptual properties of sounds across languages", in M.J. Solé, P. S. Beddor, M. Ohala, Experimental Approaches to Phonology, Oxford, OUP, 54-71 (2007)

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•P. Boersma, D. Weenink, Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 4.6.13) [Computer program]. Retrieved in August 2007, from http://www.praat.org/ (2007)

•A. Bothorel, P. Simon, F. Wioland, J-P. Zerling, Cinéradiographie des voyelles et consonnes du français. Strasbourg, Publications de l'Institut de Phonétiquede Strasbourg (1986)

•CALLIOPE, La parole et son traitement automatique. Masson, Paris, Milano, Barcelona, Mexico (1989)

•T. Chiba, M. Kajiyama, The Vowel: Its Nature and Structure, Tokyo, Tokyo-Kaiseikan Publishing (first edition in 1941) (1955)

•C. Gendrot, M. Adda-Decker, "Analyses formantiquesautomatiques de voyelles orales : évidence de la réduction vocalique en langues française et allemande", Proc. Colloque MIDL 2004, 7-12 (2004)

•P. Martin, "Le système vocalique du français du Québec. De l'acoustique à la phonologie",La linguistique38(2),71-88 (2002)

References

Concluding remarks• /u/ pronounced by Japanese-speaking learners: difference of judgment between French and Quebec listeners for tokens with F2 between 1000 and 1100 Hz (the zone that corresponds with Quebec lax [ʊ]).

• What about vowels pronounced in open and closed syllables?

Acknowledgement•The authors would like to express their gratitude to the participants of the experiment, and to the LPP (Laboratoire de phonétique et phonologie UMR 7018, CNRS) and the École Doctorale 268 Langage et langues(Université Paris 3) for their financial support that made this presentation possible.

Martin (2002)