The Impact of L2 Dialect on Learning French Vowels: Native English Speakers Learning Québécois and European French

Abstract

This article examines how a second language (L2) dialect affects how accurately the L2 is perceived and produced. Specifically, the study examined differences between the production and perception of French vowels /i/, /y/, and /u/ by learners of either Québec French (QF) or European French (EF). These vowels differ across the two varieties, both acoustically and because of assibilation of /t-d/ before /i-y/ for QF versus EF. As a result of these differences, QF has an additional acoustic cue with which to contrast /u/ and /i-y/. Anglophone learners of QF or EF were asked to identify and discriminate both QF and EF vowels and to produce the vowels in several phonetic contexts. Results indicate that QF learners were more accurate at discrimination and identification of these vowels as produced by both QF and EF speakers and that L2 dialect exposure affects how well learners perceive and produce these French vowels.Résumé : Le présent article examine l'influence de la locution d'une langue seconde (L2) sur la façon dont elle est perçue et produite. Plus précisément, l'étude porte sur les différences entre la production et la perception des voyelles françaises (/i/, /y/, et /u/) par les apprenants du français québécois (FQ) ou du français européen (FE). Ces voyelles sont différentes les unes des autres, tant phonétiquement qu'en raison de l'assibilation de /t/ ou de /d/ avant /i/ ou /y/ pour le français québécois par rapport au français européen. É tant donné ces différences, le FQ a une marque acoustique supplémentaire qui permet de faire contraster /u/ et /i/, et /y/. Nous avons demandé aux apprenants anglophones du FQ ou du FE d'identifier des voyelles tant FQ que FE et d'en faire la différence, et de produire ces voyelles dans plusieurs contextes phonétiques. Les résultats indiquent que les apprenants en FQ pouvaient plus précisément faire la différence entre ces voyelles et les identifier telles qu'elles étaient prononcées par les apprenants en FQ et en # 2010 The Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 66, 5 (August/aoû t), 711 -738

Native dialect matters: Perceptual assimilation of Dutch vowels by Czech listeners

“…For instance, Escudero and Boersma (2004) showed that Spanish learners of Scottish English will, at the beginning of their L2 development, have more difficulty perceiving the /i+-I/ contrast than Spanish learners of Southern British English because these two vowels are not contrasted by duration in Scottish English. Baker and Smith (2010) showed that English learners of Québéc French differ from English learners of European French in how accurately they can discriminate the French /i-y-u/ contrast. Importantly, while learners of different L2 varieties have some different perceptual assimilation patterns, it is also likely that the specific dialect of the listener's L1 may affect foreign-language or L2 perception.…”

L2 dialect acquisition of German vowels: The case of Northern German and Austrian dialects

“…Moreover, QF /yː/ and /uː/ vowels are also more separated acoustically in the vowel space than are EF vowels. Two features of the Baker and Smith (2010) study, however, cause the findings to be unclear: In the Baker and Smith (2010) study, it was unclear whether the additional acoustic cue or greater separation in the vowel space influenced Québécois French learners' ability to more accurately produce and perceive French vowels. Similarly, it was also unknown whether exposure to two dialects influenced the QF learners' greater accuracy than that of EF learners, since the QF learners were exposed to both European and Québécois French (unlike the EF learners who were only exposed to European French).…”

“…The effect of the L2 dialect on L2 phonological learning seems especially salient if one dialect contains acoustic cues that help in distinguishing between difficult L2 sound contrasts. Baker and Smith (2010), for example, found that learners of Québécois French (QF) were Brought to you by | HEC Bibliotheque Maryriam ET J. Authenticated Download Date | 6/26/15 4:21 AM more accurate than learners of European French (EF) at perceiving and producing French /iː/, /yː/, and /uː/. QF learners' increased accuracy may have been caused by two factors: QF has an extra acoustic cue (assibilation of alveolar consonants before high front vowels) that distinguishes between French /yː/-/uː/.…”

Mobile speech recognition software: A tool for teaching second language pronunciation

“…This is an ideal target phoneme for pronunciation instruction because, as mentioned earlier, /y/ is highly problematic for speakers of a variety of first languages (e.g. English, Mandarin, Spanish) in both production and perception (Baker and Smith, 2010;Levy and Strange, 2008). According to Flege's (1995) Speech Learning Model, during acquisition, speech perception becomes attuned to the contrastive phonic elements of the L1 and thus learners may fail to discern the phonetic differences between sounds in the L2.…”

“…In the investigation, we focus on the acquisition of the French phoneme /y/ (as in tu /ty/ 'you') for two main reasons: (1) the sound is highly difficult to acquire in both production and perception (e.g. Baker and Smith, 2010;Levy and Law II, 2010;Rochet, 1995); and (2) it has a high functional load in the target language (Jenkins, 2002;King, 1967), as it is used to distinguish many French minimal pairs such as au-dessous /od.su/ 'below' and au-dessus /od.sy/ 'above'. To our knowledge, there are no studies that have investigated the use of ASR on mobile devices for pronunciation teaching (see also Godwin-Jones, 2009, for a similar observation).…”