Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
Learning a second language is very difficult and may require years of practice to reach fluency. However, theories like the Speech Learning Model (SLM), tell us that regardless of years of practice, perfect pronunciation of sounds that are absent in a speaker’s first language is difficult, especially if the sound is relatively similar to one in the speaker’s first language. For instance, the French vowel sound /y/, in the word sucre ‘sugar’, is absent in American English, and is very similar to the sound /u/, like in the word soupe ‘soup’. These form a minimal pair where the sounds differ in only one phonological element.
In this project, I hypothesized that students would be able to form a separate category for the high fronted closed vowel /y/, regardless its proximity to its American English counterpart /u/, which would oppose the SLM.
To test our prediction that advanced students could produce /y/, and differentiate it from /u/, we recruited 15 native English-speaking students, via classroom presentations, at Colorado State University currently studying French at various proficiency levels. We recorded their production of isolated English and French sentences before acoustically analyzing their vowel productions. The sentences were semantically neutral, meaning they are without positive or negative associations, with the target phoneme in the middle, such as Dites “bus” une fois encore s’il vous plait “Say bus one more time please.”
Results showed that production of /y/ and the ability to differentiate it from /u/ do not correlate to the level of French, and hence falling in line with the predictions of the SLM. Although our hypothesis failed, next steps would check if comprehensibility has been affected, by testing if these phoneme substitutions prevented a native French speaker from understanding.
Mentor Name
Dora Lacasse
An Acoustic Analysis of French Vowel Phoneme Substitutions in Native English Speakers
UC North Ballroom
Learning a second language is very difficult and may require years of practice to reach fluency. However, theories like the Speech Learning Model (SLM), tell us that regardless of years of practice, perfect pronunciation of sounds that are absent in a speaker’s first language is difficult, especially if the sound is relatively similar to one in the speaker’s first language. For instance, the French vowel sound /y/, in the word sucre ‘sugar’, is absent in American English, and is very similar to the sound /u/, like in the word soupe ‘soup’. These form a minimal pair where the sounds differ in only one phonological element.
In this project, I hypothesized that students would be able to form a separate category for the high fronted closed vowel /y/, regardless its proximity to its American English counterpart /u/, which would oppose the SLM.
To test our prediction that advanced students could produce /y/, and differentiate it from /u/, we recruited 15 native English-speaking students, via classroom presentations, at Colorado State University currently studying French at various proficiency levels. We recorded their production of isolated English and French sentences before acoustically analyzing their vowel productions. The sentences were semantically neutral, meaning they are without positive or negative associations, with the target phoneme in the middle, such as Dites “bus” une fois encore s’il vous plait “Say bus one more time please.”
Results showed that production of /y/ and the ability to differentiate it from /u/ do not correlate to the level of French, and hence falling in line with the predictions of the SLM. Although our hypothesis failed, next steps would check if comprehensibility has been affected, by testing if these phoneme substitutions prevented a native French speaker from understanding.