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
1 Tremblay ,
Takeki
2 Kamiyama
1. Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa 2. Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (UMR 7018), CNRS / Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
[email protected]
Research question
Hypothesis
Do native listeners of French from France and Quebec judge French /u/ pronounced by Japanesespeaking learners differently?
Quebec listeners judge Japanese-speaking learners’ /u/, pronounced with higher F2 (> 1000 Hz) as better exemplars of /u/ than French listeners.
Answer suggested by the present study
Experiment: perception test
Yes, to some extent (tokens with F2 between 1000-1100 Hz).
French /u/ [u u] and Japanese /u/ [ɯ ɯ]
Stimuli •French vowels /u y ø/ in isolation. •Carrier sentence: “Je dis /V/ comme dans …” (e.g. Je dis /u/ comme dans “loup”). •5 Japanese-speaking learners (JSL: 3 male and 2 female) studying French in Tokyo.
French /u/ [u] Native speaker
Japanese learner
Acoustically central (evenly distributed formants) F2 > 1000 Hz
F1/F2 French /u/ (Wioland 1991) Japanese /u/ (Uemura 1990)
Listeners
•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 Japanesespeaking learners (jp: mean of 6 tokens). The error bars represent ±1SD.
• 16 native listeners of French from France. • 16 native listeners of French from Quebec.
Protocol • Identification: multiple forced choice (10 oral and 4 nasal vowels of French). • Rating: 1-5 (good exemplar or not?).
•18 tokens x 3 vowels x 4 repetitions.
Results: identification
16 French listeners
Results: identification x rating of /u/ reponses 16 French listeners
Quebec French
Parisian French: 10 oral vowels and 3 nasal vowels
F2
High vowels /i y u/ have lax allophones [ɪɪ ʊ ʏ] in ʊp]). closed syllables (« soupe » /sup/ [sʊ Martin (2002)
F2
F2
F1/F2
[ʊ ʊ]
[ʊ ʊ ] F2 > 1000 Hz 16 Quebec listeners
•/u/ pronounced by a male native speaker.
6 male speakers
F1
* 16 Quebec listeners
•/u/ pronounced by a male Japanese-speaking learner.
6 female speakers
*
F2 F2
F1
References
Tokyo Japanese: 5 vowels F1 (y-axis) and F2 (x-axis) of the five vowels (male voice) of Tokyo Japanese (Sugito 1995).
•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)
•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'Université Laval (1996)
•A. Bothorel, P. Simon, F. Wioland, J-P. Zerling, Cinéradiographie des voyelles et consonnes du français. Strasbourg, Publications de l'Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg (1986)
•M. Sugito, Ôsaka - Tôkyô akusento onsei jiten CDROM: kaisetsuhen (CD-ROM Accent dictionary of Spoken Osaka and Tokyo Japanese), Tokyo, Maruzen (1995)
•CALLIOPE, La parole et son traitement automatique. Masson, Paris, Milano, Barcelona, Mexico (1989)
•Y. Uemura, Nihongo no boin, shiin, onsetsu: chouon undou no jikken-onseigakuteki kenkyû (Vowels, consonants and syllables in Japanese: an exprimental phonetic study on articulatory mouvements), Tokyo, Shûei shuppan (1990)
•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 formantiques automatiques de voyelles orales : évidence de la réduction vocalique en langues française et allemande", Proc. Colloque MIDL 2004, 7-12 (2004)
•J. Vaissière, "Area functions and articulatory modeling as 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)
•P. Martin, "Le système vocalique du français du Québec. De l'acoustique à la phonologie", La linguistique 38(2), 71-88 (2002)
•F. Wioland. Prononcer les mots du français, Paris, Hachette (1991)
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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.
ASA'09 Cross Language Perception Tremblay & Kamiyama
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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?
