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 Tremblay 1 , Takeki Kamiyama 2 1. Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa 2. Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (UMR 7018), CNRS / Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris [email protected] Research question Do native listeners of French from France and Quebec judge French /u/ pronounced by Japanese- speaking learners differently? Answer suggested by the present study Yes, to some extent (tokens with F2 between 1000-1100 Hz). French /u/ [ u u u] and Japanese /u/ [ ɯ ɯ ɯ] French /u/ (Wioland 1991) Japanese /u/ (Uemura 1990) French /u/ [u] Native speaker Native speaker Japanese Japanese learner learner F1/F2 Acoustically central (evenly distributed formants) 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: mean of 6 tokens). The error bars represent ±1SD. Hypothesis Quebec listeners judge Japanese-speaking learners’ /u/, pronounced with higher F2 (> 1000 Hz) as better exemplars of /u/ than French listeners. Quebec French High vowels /i y u/ have lax allophones [ɪ ɪ ɪʊ ʊ ʊʏ ʏ ʏ] in closed syllables (« soupe » /sup/ [sʊ ʊ ʊp]). F2 F1 F1 [ʊ ʊ ʊ] [ʊ ʊ ʊ] 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 (Sugito 1995). Experiment: perception test Stimuli F1/F2 F2 > 1000 Hz •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. •18 tokens x 3 vowels x 4 repetitions. Listeners • 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?). Results: identification F2 16 French listeners F2 16 Quebec listeners * * F2 Results: identification x rating of /u/ reponses 16 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'Université Laval (1996) •M. Sugito, Ôsaka - Tôkyô akusento onsei jiten CD- ROM: kaisetsuhen (CD-ROM Accent dictionary of Spoken Osaka and Tokyo Japanese), Tokyo, Maruzen (1995) •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) •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) •F. Wioland. Prononcer les mots du français, Paris, Hachette (1991) •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 Phonétique de 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 formantiques automatiques 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 linguistique 38(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)