Linguistics

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§ The study of language and its structure§ Phonology: A branch of Linguistics

focused on the phonetics of a language § IPA: International phonetic alphabet§ Placement, rounding

I. Introduction

Neurolinguistics§ Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural

processes underlying language production and comprehensionTools of Neurolinguistics:

§ MMN§ linguistic stimuli§ ERP § EEG

https://en.w ikipedia.org/w iki/F ile :IPA_vow el_chart_2005.png

II. Review of Literature

Models of Speech Perception

Non-Native Phonemes§ Non-native consonants (An et al., 2013)§ Consonant discrimination with training

(Tamminen et. al 2015)§ Non-native French vowels (Gottfreid, 1984 and

Levy and Strange, 2008)

(Got

tfrei

d, 1

984)

§ PAM (Best, 1995) § PAM L2 (Best and Tyler, 2007)

§ According to PAM and PAM-L2 the ability of non-native listeners to perceive and accurately differentiate between non-native phonemes is based on the similarity between native and other non-native phonemes to the phoneme heard (Best and Tyler, 2007).

§ Speech Language Model (Flege, 2007)§ According to SLM, the creation of a

new category for a non-native phoneme depends on how different the phoneme is from the original L1 sound. Phonetic category formation in the L2 according to SLM is being able to put sounds into the same category despite irrelevant auditory differences and being able to distinguish that sound from other categories despite commonalities.

§ Gottfried (1984) and Levy and Strange (2008) findings versus my findings

§ /u-y/ contrast may have been better for non-French takers due to their Spanish experience

§ No significant consonant context effect, however there was a link between language studied and vowel contrast

§ Methods differed § Age difference between groups § Phonemic awareness training

VII. Discussion and Conclusions

Discussion

§ No Native French speakers § Small sample size because sample had to be

divided into two groups § New methods § Stimulus all from one person

Limitations

§ In the future I would like to:§ ERP study§ More participants § Training task§ French speaking

control group § Category goodness

Further Research

Conclusions§ Middle school and high school experience is

insufficient to learn non-native vowels§ Further research into training students to

recognize novel contrasts is needed

AcknowledgementsI would like to thank my mentor, Valerie Shafer, and my Science Research instructor, Michael Inglis for their guidance in the completion of my research project

VIII. Bibliography

--

1. Can English speakers with and without French experience accurately identify French vowels?

2. Do French takers show better identification of French Vowels than non-French takers?

3. Which vowel contrast is hardest for French takers versus non-French takers?

III. Research Questions IV. Hypotheses

Ho: The participants will perform at chance. There will be no significance from the test. H1: French takers and non-French takers will perform above chance but there will be no difference between the performance of the groups.H2: French takers will perform better than non-French takers overall.H3: French takers and non-French takers will find different contrasts difficult to identify correctly.

V. Methods

§ There were two versions of the study, an in person and online version§ Both consisted of a set task in which participants listened two 30 vowel pairs consisting of the vowels / ø /, /y/, /u/, and /o/ in a CV§ IPA was used in the task

Methods Recruitment § Recruitment process: email, posters, and asking people to sign up§ Exclusion criteria: L1 English, and native English speaker §Ages 12-18§ Participants 46§All participants were either currently taking French, Spanish, or not taking a language currently but had studied French or Spanish

0

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French Takers Age Distribution

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Non-French Takers Age Distribution

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Age Distribution of All Participants

Figure 2. Three graphs detailing the age distributions in the entire study, the French takers, and the non-French taker groups

Figure 1. A sample question from the discrimination task, to see the complete worksheet given to participants see the end of the study.

Figure 4. This chart shows the percentage that each group got the different vowel pairs correct in the discrimination task.

VI. Analysis and Results

§ Participants grouped based on language studied; French and non-French§ The average raw score for non-French takers was 20.8 (69% correct) whereas the average score for French takers was 20.4 (68% correct) § T-test used to evaluate whether there was a significant difference between the groups performances§A chi-squared test was used to test for a correlation between group and accuracy in discriminating by vowel contrast pair and consonant

0

0.5

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Non-French Takers Score Distribution

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Score Distribution of All Participants

0

0.5

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French Takers Score Distribution

0

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PERC

ENTA

GE C

ORRE

CT

/Ø-U/ /Y-Ø/ /U-Y/

Percentage Correct by Vowel Pair

Fre nch Non -Fre nch

0

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PERC

ENTA

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FRICATIVE AVEOLAR BILABIAL VELAR

Percentage Correct by Consonant Type

Fre nch Non -Fre nch

Analysis

Figure 3. Three graphs detailing the score distributions in the entire study, the French takers, and the non-French taker groups

Figure 5.. This chart shows the percentage that each group got the different vowel pairs correct in the discrimination task.

Results § No significant difference between groups scores§ Chi-squared test did show some relationship between vowel and group§ Some questions were significantly more difficult for either group