UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
The acquisition of front rounded and nasalized vowels of French by native speakers
of English
By
Jenna Meers
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF
ARTS WITH HONOURS
DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
MAY 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: Introduction…………………………………………………………...2
CHAPTER TWO: Vowel Perception………………………………………………….....3
2.1 Front Rounded and Back Rounded Vowel Perception………………………..4
2.2 Nasal Vowels……………………………………………………………….....7
CHAPTER THREE: Learning…………………………………………………………....9
3.1 Second Language Learning…………………………………………………..10
3.2 Generalization of Learning…………………………………………………..11
CHAPTER FOUR: Experiment…………………………………………………………15
4.1 Basis for Research……………………………………………………………15
4.2 Predictions……………………………………………………………………17
4.3 Methods………………………………………………………………………19
4.3.1 Participants…………………………………………………………19
4.3.1.1 Speakers………………………………………………….19
4.3.1.2 Learners…………………………………………………..19
4.3.2 Stimuli……………………………………………………………...20
4.3.3 Procedure…………………………………………………………..22
CHAPTER FIVE: Results and Discussion……………………………………………...28
5.1 Results………………………………………………………………………..28
5.1.1 Learning……………………………………………………………28
5.1.2 Generalization……………………………………………………...31
5.2 Discussion……………………………………………………………………37
5.2.1 Learning……………………………………………………………37
5.2.2 Generalization……………………………………………………...40
5.2.3 Confusions…………………………………………………………41
CHAPTER SIX: Conclusion……………………………………………………………43
REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………..46
APPENDIX A: Speaker word lists……………………………………………………...48
APPENIDX B: Confusion matrices for all learners at all sessions……………………..52
1
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
As the world grows smaller, more and more individuals are learning multiple
languages in order to communicate with others from many different regions, countries
and continents. For an adult, this can prove to be a difficult task and it is one which has
piqued the interest of many researchers. The meaningful sounds of a foreign language
may differ from those of an individual’s native tongue in many respects. The effect of
these differences on the perceptual learning of a new language will be investigated in the
present study.
The specific task of second language acquisition addressed here is the learning of
French vowels by native speakers of English. There are two types of vowels that are
found in French, but not in English: front rounded vowels and nasal vowels. This study
will investigate whether one of these vowel types is easier for Anglophones to acquire
than the other. It will also shed some light on the effect that training in the identification
of one or the other of these two vowel categories might have on the ability of English
speakers to generalize learning to other new categories.
Through a series of vowel identification training sessions, the speed at which
English speakers acquire the front rounded vowels of French was compared with their
acquisition of French nasal vowels. A final generalization task is performed by the
participants in order to determine whether learning one or the other type of vowel leads to
a better ability to generalize their acquired identification skills to the remainder of the
French vowel inventory.
2
CHAPTER TWO
Vowel Perception
Despite the fact that both vowels and consonants are parts of natural human
language, it is not clear that the two may be treated in the same way when it comes to
perception. Polka (1994) points out that although both are processed using categorical
and auditory coding, the brevity and small spectral change of consonants favour the
former and the length and large spectral change of vowels favour the latter.
The
perception of vowels is also a complex phenomenon to study due to the fact that vowels
are distinguished based on these auditory and acoustic cues and more loosely on
articulatory phenomenon. This allows for the quality of a vowel to be greatly determined
by the consonants surrounding it in natural speech, meaning that one token of a vowel
may sound very different from another depending on the context in which it is found.
For instance, a vowel may become nasalized between two nasal consonants, as in English
‘man’, which phonemically is [mæn], but is almost always pronounced [mæ̃n]. Listeners
are aware of this type of effect and may make perceptual errors by attributing certain
features they hear to the conditioning environment when they in fact are characteristic of
the intended vowel itself. In natural speech, for example, [u] is often somewhat fronted
when found between alveolar consonants, sounding more like [y], but listeners are able to
‘factor out’ this fronting, attributing it to the context of the vowel, and perceive the
intended [u]. This could potentially lead to the mistake of taking an intended [y] in
alveolar context to be a [u] that has simply moved forward. Ohala (1981) demonstrated
this by having listeners identify synthesized high vowels on a continuum from back to
3
front as either [u] or [i] (which is acoustically very similar to [y]). In one condition, the
vowels were in bilabial context – [fVp] – and in the other condition they were in alveolar
context – [sVt]. The study found that those listeners in the alveolar condition identified
vowels much further forward as [u], compared to those in the bilabial condition.
Presumably, this is because the former individuals are ‘blaming’ the fronting of the
vowels on the effect of the anterior consonants surrounding them.
Phenomena such as this demonstrate the intricacies involved in the processing of
vowel sounds in general. The discussion that follows addresses some more peculiar cases
of vowel perception that are relevant to the present study.
2.1
Front Rounded and Back Rounded Vowel Perception
If the story of vowel perception were not already complicated enough, the feat of
attempting to master a non-native vowel system adds another dimension of complexity.
Logically, an individual’s ability to discriminate between sounds increases with
experience, but L2 learners do continue to struggle with the influence of their native
phoneme categories on their perception of non-native phonemes. It is evident that one’s
native language shapes the way in which speech sounds are perceived.
This is a
phenomenon that has been widely studied by researchers interested in speech perception
and second language acquisition. The present study benefits greatly from this previous
research, as many experiments have sought to compare the perception of front rounded
vowels and back rounded vowels by individuals whose native languages do not contain
front rounded vowels.
4
Many of these studies comparing the perception of front rounded and back
rounded vowels were inspired by research of the likes of an investigation of labelling
patterns performed by Rochet (1995). This study is interesting because it demonstrates
that an individual's native phoneme categories not only influence their ability to identify
non-native sounds, but also the category into which these novel sounds will be
assimilated.
In the experiment in question, a continuum of synthetic vowels were
presented to native speakers of Canadian English, Brazilian Portuguese and Standard
French, who were asked to identify them as one of the high vowels of their language ([i]
or [u] for English and Portuguese, [i], [y] or [u] for French). Rochet's finding was that
the English speakers most often identified as [u] those vowels that the French speakers
labelled [y], while the Portuguese speakers took them to be [i]. This finding suggested
that the perceptual boundary between [i] and [u] differs between Brazilian Portuguese
and Canadian English, being further back in the former.
One study that drew on the findings of Rochet (1995) was performed by Strange
et al. (2004) found that American English (AE)-speaking listeners assimilated North
German (NG) front-rounded vowels, produced in citation-form hVp syllables embedded
in a carrier sentence, to their native back-rounded categories instead of recognizing them
as foreign sounds. They concluded that this was due to the variability within the AE
categories, which is characterised in particular by fronting of back vowels in alveolar
contexts. This is quite interesting as front-rounded vowels like [y], [ø] and [œ] are in fact
more spectrally similar to their front-unrounded counterparts [i], [e] and [ɛ] than to the
back-rounded vowels [u], [o] and [ɔ].
5
In a later study (Strange et al. 2005), the researchers again investigated the
perceptual similarity of North German (NG) and American English (AE) vowels. This
time, the consonantal context of the German vowels varied, as they were presented in
bVp, bVt, dVt, gVk or gVt syllables occurring in a short carrier sentence produced by
four native speakers of North German. The AE participants were asked to rate the
vowels on goodness in terms of their native categories. It was found that NG frontrounded and back-rounded vowels were judged as equally good exemplars of AE backrounded vowels. This finding provides further evidence for the phenomenon of English
speakers’ perception of front rounded vowels as back rounded vowels, as was occurring
in the first study.
A similar pattern was observed by Levy and Strange (2007) in the perception of
French vowels by American English adults. In their study, native speakers of English
with varying French experience were presented with short utterances spoken by a native
Parisian French speaker containing a word that differed between trials by its second
syllable. This syllable contained one of the 9 oral vowels of this dialect of French in
either bilabial (bVp) or alveolar (dVt) context. The participants completed an AXB
discrimination task, the results of which showed that, even with years of experience, such
as those possessed by a French teacher, /u/ and /y/ are difficult for English speakers to
distinguish. This was the pair that showed the most errors in the discrimination task,
particularly in alveolar context where, as was noted above, English /u/ tends to be
fronted. There was also some difficulty with /y/ and /i/ in bilabial context, indicating that
when the context allows for native English vowels to remain back, /y/ may be perceived
as more similar to /i/, to which its category is spectrally closer, than /u/.
6
2.2
Nasal Vowels
The cases discussed above all involved vowels in which the velum is raised to
block the nasal passage – oral vowels. However, a second type of vowel is of import to
the present research due to its presence in the French vowel system. These are nasal
vowels, whose properties are quite peculiar and warrant a closer look.
One thing that is unique about nasal vowels as compared to oral vowels, as was
observed by Wright (1980), is that in languages that contrast between both types of
vowels, they never outnumber the oral vowels.
This is seen in languages such as
Portuguese, which has seven oral vowels, but only five nasal vowels, and Beembe, a
language spoken in Congo, which has an equal number (five) of each. Wright suspected
that this fact may be related to Lindblom's (1975) finding that pairs of nasalized vowels
were acoustically closer than the corresponding oral pairs and sought to determine if the
same pattern would hold in terms of perception. An experiment was carried out in which
American English listeners judged the similarity of pairs of vowels, which had been
carefully produced in an attempt to provide an ideal token of the vowels [i, e, ɛ, æ, o, ʊ,
u] and their nasalized counterparts. The results showed that the participants' judgements
were based on three "dimensions", which are roughly equivalent to vowel height,
backness and nasality. The most interesting finding, however, was that the distance
between a given pair of nasalized vowels in the three-dimensional space plotted was
consistently smaller than that of the corresponding oral pair.
In other words, the
nasalized vowels were perceptually closer to each other than the oral vowels were.
Some more insight into how nasal vowels differ perceptually from oral vowels
comes from the work of Delvaux who, along with some colleagues, has extensively
7
studied the nasal vowels of French, especially the Belgian variety (Delvaux et al., 2002;
2004). One observation they make is that the F1 of nasal vowels is generally higher than
that of oral vowels and the F2 is generally lower. In other words, nasal vowels tend to be
lower and further back. In one experiment (Delveaux et al., 2002), [ɔ̃] was found to be
the exception to this, being higher (having a lower F1) than the oral [ɔ]. Delvaux et al.
(2004) also indicate that there is a decrease in energy from oral vowels to nasal vowels,
particularly in the areas of F1 and F3. The most important finding, however, is that it is
not just the lowering of the velum that causes a particular vowel to be perceived as nasal,
but anything that leads to a lower F2, such as lip rounding and tongue retraction. These
phenomena affecting the formants are referred to as compactness (the damping of energy)
and graveness (the frequency of F2).
Delvaux found that the co-variation of the
articulations affecting compactness and graveness increases the perceptual distance
between oral and nasal vowels, as the perception of one property influences the
perception of the other. This was found to be true for Francophones, for whom nasal
vowels are contrastive, as well as for Anglophones, for whom they are simply allophones.
These findings on speech perception are of great importance to the present study
as its focus is on how English speakers perceive French vowels. The other aspect of the
investigation deals with changes in the perception of these vowels as their experience
with them increases. The interaction of these perceptive phenomena with the process of
language learning will therefore be discussed in the following chapter.
8
CHAPTER THREE
Learning
For the purposes of this study, there are two important areas under the broad
heading of learning, which require a closer look. The first of these is the acquisition of a
second language and, more specifically, how speech perception is at work in this process.
Also of interest is the generalization of perceptually learned information to new and
somewhat different categories.
3.1 Second Language Learning
The process of acquiring a second language has been thoroughly investigated in
the linguistic and psychological communities. Despite some apparent similarities in the
progress of first and second language acquisition, they have been said to be
fundamentally different processes. According to Bley-Vroman (1990), second language
acquisition is in fact more closely related to general problem solving than to child
language development. The majority of researchers acknowledge that differences in the
ultimate attainment of learners, the path along which their knowledge develops, and their
performance on specific tasks require a distinction to be made between first and second
language acquisition (Carroll, 2008). Here, the two will not be compared, but rather
some processes specific to adults acquiring a second language will be addressed. A
description of previous studies on adult second language acquisition will demonstrate
how the knowledge of a first language makes mastering a second language a rather
unique task.
9
One common issue in adult language learning is that of foreign accent. This is an
interesting phenomenon when we consider the fact that a learner may achieve native-like
proficiency in other aspects of a second language, but continue to have difficulty with the
non-native phonemes. In Rochet’s (1995) study of perception and production of L2
speech sounds, discussed in the previous chapter, it was found that individuals’ second
language phonetic production errors correspond to their perception of the phonemes in
question. Specifically, Brazilian Portuguese speakers who often perceived French [y] as
their native [i] were also observed to frequently produce this form when attempting to
produce the former vowel. English speakers, on the other hand, tend to perceive [u]
when presented with the French [y] and consequently often produce [u] in their erroneous
attempt at the front rounded vowel. What this demonstrates is that if a learner does not
perceive a sound in a native-like fashion, they will have more difficulty producing them
that way.
This issue was addressed by Brown (2000), who investigated the difference in
ability of speakers of various languages to acquire the English contrasting phonemes,
with special interest in the variation between /l/ and /ɹ/. In particular, she was interested
in Japanese speakers, who notoriously confuse these phonemes in production. The study
in question takes up the idea that a learner’s native phonemic categories will influence
their perception (and therefore production) of non-native sounds.
Brown uses the
theoretical framework of Feature Geometry to illustrate a possible reason for differences
in categorical distribution and explain the problems speakers of certain languages
encounter when learning new phonological systems. This theory suggests that all of the
phonemes of the world’s languages can be represented on the basis of the relations
10
between their defining characteristics or features, meaning that differences in phonemic
inventories will be due to the set of phonological features manipulated by each language.
The set of features is determined by the contrastive phonemes in each language in the
sense that only those which are sufficient to provide contrast between all of its sounds are
present. If no phoneme pair makes use of a particular feature to distinguish between
them, the language in question will not possess this feature. This is in accordance with
the theory of Minimally Contrastive Underspecification, (Avery and Rice, 1989).
The relevant example here is the difference in the features present in the Feature
Geometries of Chinese and Japanese speakers which allows the former to acquire the
English /l/ vs. /ɹ/ distinction, while the latter may never completely achieve this (Mann &
Takagi, 1995). Brown observed that /l/ and /ɹ/ are distinguished based on the feature
[coronal], which is used in Mandarin Chinese to differentiate between alveolar /s/ and
retroflex /ʂ/, but is not present in Japanese as no native phonemes are contrastive based
solely on this feature. Because of this lack of the [coronal] feature, Japanese speakers are
not able to perceive the difference between English /l/ and /ɹ/. This makes learning to
accurately produce the two forms nearly impossible, as they do not form a mental
representation of them as distinct phonemes. Studies such as this demonstrate how the
knowledge of a first language makes mastering a second language a rather unique task.
Still, such difficulties are only one aspect of the learning process. If an individual
is able to acquire new speech sounds, he or she is still faced with the challenge of
applying this knowledge to contexts outside of that in which it was learned. This task is
addressed in the following section.
11
3.2 Generalization of Learning
A significant aspect of learning is the ability to generalize what has been learned
to new contexts. This is true of all areas in which learning is at play. If we take for
example the process of second language acquisition addressed above, individuals often
take courses to learn a new language, meaning that the vast majority of the input they
receive comes from one individual, their instructor, in a structured classroom setting.
The challenge for such learners is accessing and applying what they have been taught
about the language when interacting with other speakers outside of the classroom. In
terms of perception, this involves processing sounds from unfamiliar speakers, whose
production may be drastically different from that of their instructor in terms of such
things as pitch range, accent, gender, age, dialect, style, etc. and identifying them as
tokens of the second language phonemes they have learned. In the same vein, the learner
must also respond to utterances and partake in conversations that may not have arisen in
the structured interactions of their language class. The importance of being able to
generalize learning when it comes to language is clear when we acknowledge the
enormous amount of variability involved at all levels of these complex systems.
Greenspan, Nusbaum and Pisoni (1988) were interested in the first part of this
language learning challenge - perceptual learning - and set out an experiment in which an
individual's ability to generalize to novel stimuli was taken as an indication of how well
they had learned a particular linguistic system. Two groups of English speakers were
trained to identify words generated by a synthetic speech system whose acoustic-phonetic
structure was designed to be systematically related to that of English. Since this synthetic
speech is not characterized by the rich, context-conditioned variability that is present in
12
natural speech, the subjects were forced to relate this limited sound inventory to their
native phoneme categories and lexical representations, much like a second-language
learner would. The first group of subjects was trained with 10 stimuli, which were
repeated 20 times over the course of the experiment, while the second group was
presented with 200 novel stimuli. After five days of training, both groups were tested
with novel stimuli on the sixth day to determine how well each of them had learned the
synthetic speech system. What they found was that the second group, who had a much
greater variety of stimuli in training, had more difficulty in their initial learning, but was
better able to generalize to the novel stimuli of the test. They correctly identified more
synthetically generated words in this task than the first group who had been trained with
repeated stimuli. Greenspan et al. concluded that this was because the second group was
able to get a more complete picture of the entire system they were attempting to learn
from the variety of stimuli they were exposed to.
Another study addressing the question of generalization of learning was
performed by Clopper and Pisoni (2004), who investigated perceptual learning of
regional dialects of American English. Two groups of English listeners were trained to
identify unfamiliar speakers as belonging to one of eight dialect regions. One speaker
from each region was used to train the first group, while the second group was trained
with three different speakers from each region. Once training was completed, both
groups were given a generalization task in which speakers novel to both groups were
categorized according to dialect region. While the second group was less accurate than
the first group in identifying dialects in the training sessions, their performance was
significantly better on the generalization task. These findings mirror those of Greenspan
13
et al. in that the group whose training was characterized by more variability was better
able to generalize what they had learned to novel stimuli, a phenomenon known as the
high variability training paradigm. From evidence such as this, it is safe to conclude
that, at least in the case of perceptual learning, although a fixed small set of stimuli assists
in initial learning, variability in the learning material will lead to a greater ability to apply
what has been learned to new contexts in which the entire system of interest is at play.
There are general patterns that can be observed in the factors at play in perceptual
learning and the subsequent generalization challenges related to it. However, the details
of these patterns vary depending on each specific learning task. It is this variation that
provides motivation for experiments such as the present one, to be described in the
chapter that follows, in which English speakers take on the task of learning French
vowels.
14
CHAPTER FOUR
Experiment
The present study intends to address the perceptual learning of a second language
in a manner that draws on ideas, and in some cases apparent gaps, in the research
discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. Specifically, the acquisition of the Quebec French vowel
system by Canadian English speakers will be investigated.
4.1 Basis for Research
The French language was chosen as the target system due to the presence of
several vowels not found in English, namely front rounded vowels and nasal vowels.
These two vowel types differ from those of the English inventory in distinct ways,
allowing for a meaningful comparison of the way in which each is learned and how this
acquisition affects the learning of the French vowel system as a whole. Front rounded
vowels are contrasted among themselves based on height, and from other vowels based
on front/back and rounding distinctions. These characteristics are familiar to English
speakers since they are used to differentiate between their native vowels. For example,
[i] is distinguished from [e] based on height, while rounding and backness contrast [u]
with [i]. These facts indicate that the front rounded vowels of French fill a void in the
English vowel space, as shown in the diagram below, where the circled vowels are those
belonging to French.
15
Figure 1: Oral vowels of English
Front
High
Central
Back
i y
u
ɪ
Mid-High
ʊ
e ø
o
ә
Mid-Low
ɛ
ʌ
œ
ɔ
æ
Low
a
ɑ
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one
to the right represents a rounded vowel
Nasal vowels, on the other hand, add an entirely new dimension along which vowels may
be differentiated, as indicated by Wright (1980). This phonological dimension, nasality,
is contrastive in French, giving pairs such as [lɑ] 'there' vs. [lɑ̃] 'slow', but is simply a
product of the environment in English, where productions such as [mæn] and [mæ̃n] are
both tokens of 'man'.
The first question upon which this study will attempt to shine some light is as
follows:
(1)
Is it more difficult for native English speakers to acquire distinctions
between novel nasal vowels and their oral counterparts than between novel
oral vowels?
This question is posed in light of findings such as those of Brown (2000), where Japanese
speakers were required to learn a new feature in order to make distinctions between
English liquids. Here, it is the nasal vowels of French which require the acquisition of an
extra dimension of differentiation. The role that this additional dimension might play in
16
the high variability paradigm used by Greenspan et al. (1988) and Clopper and Pisoni
(2004) led to the investigation of a second query:
(2)
Is it easier to generalize learning of a new vowel system if the distinction
requiring the acquisition of an extra dimension is learned first?
In order to address these questions, native speakers of English will be trained over several
sessions to identify either nasal vowels or front rounded vowels of French. After this
training, the learners will complete a generalization task which will require them to
identify vowels from the entire French inventory.
4.2 Predictions
In regards to the first research question, it is predicted that the English speakers
will have more difficulty learning to distinguish the nasal vowels of French than the front
rounded vowels. The logic of this is evident when the two types of vowels are compared
in terms of the features used to distinguish them from others. As has been stated, nasal
vowels are contrasted along a dimension of nasality in addition to the height, backness
and rounding contrasts of oral vowels. This in itself would be expected to slow the
acquisition of nasal vowels.
An additional obstacle arises when the individuals
attempting to learn these distinctions are native speakers of English, due to the nature of
the vowel inventory of this language. It was mentioned in section 4.1 above that English
does not possess contrastive nasal vowels. If this were to be stated in terms of the
Feature Geometry account of second language perception presented by Brown (2000), it
would mean that English does not have the feature [nasal] required to contrast, for
17
example, [ɛ] from [ɛ̃].1 Therefore, just as Japanese speakers have difficulty learning to
discriminate between English /l/ and /ɹ/ (Mann and Tagaki, 1995; Brown, 2000), English
speakers will struggle with distinctions between oral and nasal vowels. Wright’s (1980)
finding that there is less perceptual space between nasal vowels than there is between oral
vowels would also lead us to expect that it would be difficult to distinguish among the
nasal vowels themselves.
The second prediction made is that learning the vowels of the French system
which are characterized by an extra dimension in comparison to the others will lead to
better generalization of learning to the entire vowel inventory. In other words, if a
speaker of English acquires novel nasal vowels first, they will learn the rest of the French
system, including front rounded vowels, more quickly than if the front rounded vowels
were learned first. This prediction is based on the ‘high variability training paradigm’
demonstrated by Greenspan et al. (1988) and Clopper and Pisoni (2004). Recall that
these studies found that individuals involved in perceptual learning tasks were better able
to generalize what they had learned when their training consisted of more variable
stimuli. This variability was provided by including many novel elements in the training
material as opposed to using a fixed set of stimuli. In the present study the variability is
of a somewhat different nature. Due to the extra dimension of nasality that characterizes
nasal vowels, they may be considered to be inherently more variable than oral vowels in
terms of the features that must be learned in order to be able to distinguish them. If an
English speaker were to learn the front rounded vowels of French without learning the
1
English does possess a [nasal] feature used to contrast among consonants such as the nasal [m] and the
stop [b]. It was asserted in the second chapter, however, that vowels and consonants cannot necessarily be
treated in the same manner. Clements (1985) attempts to do this in his proposed model of feature
geometry, but his discussion is not restricted to contrastive phonemes as Brown’s (2000) and this one are.
18
nasals, they would be missing a feature that is necessary to the accurate perception of the
complete system. For this reason, the acquisition of the nasal vowels should allow
learners to pick up the rest of the French vowel inventory relatively easily, having access
to all of the features necessary to distinguish among them.
4.3 Methods
4.3.1 Participants
4.3.1.1 Speakers
Two native speakers of Quebec French between 40 and 50 years of age produced
the recordings used to create the stimuli for the experiment. One speaker was male, the
other female. Both were born in Quebec and moved to Calgary in adulthood, where they
continue to speak French on a regular basis with family and friends.
4.3.1.2 Learners
Six adult native speakers of Canadian English participated in the learning
experiment.
Three of the participants were male and three were female.
In a
questionnaire filled out by the participants prior to testing, they were asked to rate their
proficiency in languages other than English in terms of speaking, reading and writing on
a scale of 1 to 5. The ratings given for French are presented in the table below.
19
Table 1: French Knowledge
Participant
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Nasal 1
Nasal 2
Nasal 3
Speaking
1
1
1
2
2
1
Writing
2
1
1
2
2
2
Reading
3
1
3
2
2
3
Three participants also indicated some knowledge of Spanish and one had intermediate
knowledge of German, which had been learned in adulthood.
4.3.2 Stimuli
The stimuli to be used in the experiment were produced by the two native French
speakers in a sound-attenuate recording room in the phonetics lab at the University of
Calgary. The speakers were recorded speaking into a microphone at a sample rate of
48000 Hz using Adobe Audition 2.0 on the lab’s computer, while the experimenter, a
bilingual speaker of English and French, listened through headphones to ensure the
quality of the recordings. Each speaker read 13 lists of 26 monosyllabic French words
(or bisyllabic when a sufficient number of appropriate words was unavailable),
representing the 13 contrastive vowels of Quebec French (see Appendix A for complete
word lists). These vowels are shown in the chart below.
20
Figure 2: French Vowel Inventory
Front
High
Central
Back
i y
Mid-High
u
e ø
o
ɛ
Mid-Low
œ ɛ̃
ɔ̃
Low
ɔ
ɑ̃
a
From each list, the 25 best recordings were used to create the stimuli, usually meaning an
exclusion of the final word due to the creaking and drop in pitch that is characteristic of
individuals’ voice quality when reaching the end of a recited list. From these recorded
words, the vowels of interest were manually extracted using Praat (Boersma and
Weenink,2007) software and saved as individual .aiff files (totalling 650).
These vowel sounds removed from the consonantal context would serve as the
stimuli presented to the learners. A training task was created using SuperCard software
in which these sounds were associated with an arbitrarily assigned symbol, according to
the vowel category to which each token belonged. These symbols are shown in the table
below with the vowels they represented.
Table 2: Symbols Representing French Vowels
i
y
e
ø
ɛ
œ
ɛ̃
a
ɑ̃
u
o
ɔ
ɔ̃
21
4.3.3 Procedure
The six English speaking participants were divided into two groups of three. The
first of these, referred to as the Round Group, would be trained to identify the front
rounded vowels of French and their unrounded counter parts, as are shown in the
following chart.
Figure 3: Round Group Training Vowels
Front
High
i y
Mid-High
e ø
Mid-Low
ɛ
œ
The other group, referred to as the Nasal Group, would learn to identify the three nasal
vowels and the corresponding oral vowels as presented below.
Figure 4: Nasal Group Training Vowels
Front
Mid-Low
Low
Central
ɛ
Back
ɛ̃
ɔ̃
a
ɔ
ɑ̃
Each of the groups participated in three training sessions occurring on three different
days. On a fourth day, the participants were given a generalization task. The time
22
between sessions varied among the participants and these values are shown in Tables 3
and 4.
Table 3: Days Between Round Group Experimental Sessions
Participant
1
2
3
Session 1-2
Session 2-3
4
12
7
Session 3-4
1
2
2
2
5
12
Table 4: Days Between Nasal Group Experimental Sessions
Participant
1
2
3
Session 1-2
Session 2-3
15
6
2
Session 3-4
5
6
5
1
2
2
During these sessions, the learners sat in front of computer wearing
Beyerdynamic DT-660 headphones through which the stimuli were presented. The first
three visits the participants made to the phonetics lab were training sessions consisting of
a familiarization phase, during which they were presented with examples of the six
vowels being learned, and a practice phase during which they which they completed an
identification task. The fourth session consisted of a generalization exercise which was
also characterized by a familiarization phase and an identification task.
At the beginning of the training sessions, the participants were presented with two
tokens of each vowel produced by the male speaker and two produced by the female
speaker to familiarize them with the speech sounds that they would be learning. As these
were played, the symbol representing the vowel category to which they belonged was
23
shown on the screen. After the participants had heard all six vowels, they were given the
opportunity to review them by clicking on buttons next to these symbols as are seen in
the images below.
Figure 5: Nasal Group Review Screen
Figure 6: Round Group Review Screen
Once the learners reviewed the vowels as much as they deemed necessary, they began the
process of learning how to identify them. The participants clicked a button to hear a
vowel and then were presented with one of the screens shown below, depending on the
24
group they belonged to, on which they were asked to click the button beside the symbol
corresponding to the sound they heard.
Figure 7: Nasal Group Response Screen
Figure 8: Round Group Response Screen
Upon each response, they were provided with feedback as to which was the correct vowel
by hearing the stimulus again over the headphones while the correct vowel label was
presented on the screen. An example of such a screen is seen in Figure 9.
25
Figure 9: Feedback Screen
The sound was only played once upon each trial and the participant was encouraged to
proceed at his or her own pace. This process continued for 120 trials by the end of which
they had heard and attempted to identify 10 tokens of each vowel produced by each of the
two speakers. The second and third training sessions proceeded in the same way, except
that the familiarization period at the beginning contained only one token of each vowel
from each speaker. Every session introduced the participants to a new series of tokens of
the six vowels they were learning.
The fourth session began as the previous two did, but following the initial six
vowels, the participants underwent the familiarization procedure with the seven
remaining vowels from the French inventory. This meant that those who had learned the
front rounded vowels were now presented with the nasal vowels, along with [a], [ɔ], [u]
and [o], while those who had been trained on the nasal vowels now heard the front
rounded vowels and [i], [e], [u] and [o]. The screen presented to the learners in order to
review all of the vowels is seen in Figure 10 below. Three tokens of each of the new
vowels were played. The participants then worked through the same identification task
26
they had performed, this time making use of all 13 vowels. After each session, the
participants’ responses were recorded in a text file along with the correct vowel.
Figure 10: Generalization Review Screen
27
CHAPTER FIVE
Results and Discussion
5.1 Results
Analysis of the results was conducted in terms of correct responses over each of
the three training sessions and the generalization task. When a learner’s symbol choice
matched that corresponding to the stimulus that was played, a correct response was
recorded. Confusion matrices for the individual vowels compiled for each participant in
each of the four sessions may be seen in Appendix B. In order to compare and contrast
these raw scores, they were converted into percentages of correct identifications.
Participants’ confusions were also tracked by recording which symbol was chosen for
incorrect responses. The results across the three training sessions are given in section
5.1, while section 5.2 presents data regarding the learners’ performance on the
generalization task of the fourth session.
5.1.1 Learning
Figure 10 below shows the percent of correct responses obtained by the three
participants in the group that was trained to distinguish between front rounded and
unrounded vowels. There is a general pattern of slight improvement over time, although
the first participant actually scored 1.67% lower in the third session than in the second
session and the third participant had the same percent correct in sessions 2 and 3.
28
Figure 11
The improvement over the three sessions is more pronounced for the group that
was trained to distinguish among nasal vowels and the corresponding oral vowels. This
is shown in Figure 12. Again, there is one participant whose correct percentage dropped
from session 2 to session 3 (58.33% to 57.50%). Participant 2 also shows a different
pattern than the rest of the participants, performing at a lower level in the second training
session than was achieved in the first or the third. This is particularly in contrast with
Participants 1 and 3 of the Nasal Group, whose correct percentages increased by 44.17
and 27.50, respectively, from session 1 to session 2.
29
Figure 12
When the average scores of each group are compared as in Figure 13, it is
observed that while the Nasal Group recorded fewer correct responses in the first session,
their improvement was greater than that of the Round Group and they in fact have a
higher overall percentage of correct responses in both the second and third sessions.
30
Figure 13
5.1.2 Generalization
In order to compare the generalization abilities of the two learning groups after
training, the percent of correct responses on the task completed on the fourth day of
participation was calculated for all six learners. These are shown in Table 5 below.
Overall, the Round Group had slightly lower scores. Again, Participant 2 of the Nasal
Group has a noticeably different score than the other members of the same group, who
both performed at close to 50% on this task.
Table 5: Generalization Scores (Percent Correct)
Group
Round
Nasal
1
30.00
50.77
Participant #
2
36.15
36.15
3
Average
39.23
35.13
51.54
46.15
31
A comparison of the scores of each group on the vowels of interest in this study
show the effect of training in identification of each type of vowel on their ability to
distinguish familiar foreign vowels amongst novel ones as well as on their ability to
generalize learning to these new stimuli. This data is represented in Figure 14, which
indicates that the Round Group’s performance on the generalization task was nearly
identical for both vowel types, while the Nasal Group identified the vowel on which they
were trained much more accurately.
Figure 14
The generalization scores of each group on the vowels of their training were
compared to their scores from the final training session in order to determine the effect of
32
the increase in the number of options for identification from training to the final task.
This data is shown in Figure 15, demonstrating that the Round Group correctly identified
a higher percentage of front rounded vowels when only 6 identity options were available.
The Nasal Group, on the other hand, was more accurate in identification of nasal vowels
in the generalization task than the third training session.
Figure 15
Perhaps more importantly, the percentage of correct responses given by each of
the groups during the session in which they were first exposed to the eleven vowels used
in both training conditions were also compared. This allows for observations to be made
in regards to the effect that training on one type of vowel had on the learners’ ability to
identify the other type, which had not previously been heard. Figure 16 displays the
Round Group’s scores in the first training session and the Nasal Group’s scores on the
33
generalization task scores for five of the front vowels of French. Here, the Nasal Group
has completed training on nasal/oral distinctions, but has not previously been exposed to
the front vowels shown. The Round Group, however, had not yet heard any of the
stimuli and therefore did not have the benefit of any training. The opposite is true of
Figure 17, in which first exposure scores are represented for both groups on five of the
vowels used in the Nasal Group’s training. The front unrounded vowel [ɛ] has been
omitted from this data as it was part of the training in both conditions.
Figure 16
34
Figure 17
On average, both groups had more difficulty with the nasal vs. oral vowel distinctions
when they first heard these stimuli than they did with the front vowel distinctions. At
first exposure, the Round Group correctly identified the five front vowels 44.33% of the
time, while the Nasal Group did so 32.67% of the time. On the nasal and oral vowels, the
Round Group got 20.00% correct and the Nasal Group scored 21.67%. There were also
two vowels, [u] and [o], which neither group had heard before the generalization task.
The Nasal Group correctly identified both of these at 50%, but the Round Group
achieved a much higher score of 83.33% for [o] and slightly lower (40%) for [u]. With
these two vowels taken into account, the Round Group was able to correctly discriminate
31.90% of the vowels that were novel to them on the generalization task and the Nasal
Group did slightly better at 37.62%.
35
Finally, the confusions between each of the different types of vowels are shown in
Tables 2 and 3, where the numbers represent the percentage of times each type of vowel
was incorrectly identified as another.
For example, in Table 2 the Round Group
misidentified front rounded vowels as back rounded vowels 30% of the time. There is no
recorded percentage for the central unrounded category because there is only one such
vowel ([a]).
Table 2: Round Group Confusions in Generalization Task (%)
Correct
Front Rounded
[y] [ø] [œ]
Front Unrounded
[i] [e] [ɛ]
Back Rounded
[u] [o] [ɔ]
Central Unrounded
[a]
Nasal
[ɛ̃] [ɑ̃] [ɔ̃]
Front
Rounded
Front
Unrounded
Errors
Back
Rounded
Central
Unrounded
Nasal
32.22
14.44
13.33
30.00
3.33
6.67
40.00
13.33
22.22
10.00
3.33
11.11
51.11
23.33
1.11
6.67
5.56
12.22
3.33
40.00
10.00
30.00
--
16.67
25.56
3.33
12.22
14.44
1.11
43.33
36
Table 3: Nasal Group Confusions in Generalization Task (%)
Correct
Front Rounded
[y] [ø] [œ]
Front Unrounded
[i] [e] [ɛ]
Back Rounded
[u] [o] [ɔ]
Central Unrounded
[a]
Nasal
[ɛ̃] [ɑ̃] [ɔ̃]
Front
Rounded
Front
Unrounded
Errors
Back
Rounded
Central
Unrounded
Nasal
22.22
26.67
13.33
25.56
6.67
5.56
47.78
18.89
17.78
5.56
6.67
3.33
45.56
22.22
5.56
13.33
2.22
11.11
60.00
10.00
20.00
6.67
--
3.33
64.44
2.22
11.11
6.67
1.11
14.44
5.2 Discussion
5.2.1 Learning
The data presented above do not support the hypothesis that English speakers
would have more difficulty learning to distinguish among French nasal vowels than
between oral vowels. In fact, participants trained to make these distinctions improved a
greater amount over time than those who learned to differentiate among the front vowels
of French. Interestingly though, the Nasal Group had more difficulty in the first training
session than the Round Group, suggesting that distinctions between nasal vowles and
their oral counterparts are more difficult at first exposure. It is possible that in the very
early stages of learning, English speakers are able to acquire the new dimension of
nasality and subsequent learning progresses at a faster rate.
In any case, this pattern is not what would be expected if ease of acquisition were
based primarily on knowledge of the features used to contrast among vowels. As was
37
mentioned in section 2.2, nasal vowels are contrasted from other in terms of nasality in
addition to the height, front/back and rounding distinctions of oral vowels. It would be
logical to predict that learning foreign vowels that are more complex in this way would
be a more difficult process than learning vowels that are only differentiated along three
dimensions. Additionally, since English does not make use of a contrast in nasality in its
vowel system, the [nasal] feature would be novel to the participants, meaning they would
have to acquire this as they learn the nasal/oral contrasts of French. The height, backness
and rounding dimensions, on the other hand, are readily available to them due to the
nature of the English vowel inventory, so differentiating among front vowels, which are
contrasted in terms of height and rounding, should be a relatively easy ability to acquire.
The present results, however, do not coincide with these predictions.
What these results indicate is that the number and novelty of features
differentiating between the vowels of a foreign system do not determine the ease with
which a speaker will be able to acquire them. This finding is apparently at odds with the
conclusions made by Brown (2000) in regards to the acquisition of /l/ vs. /ɹ/ by Japanese
and Chinese speakers, which suggested that if the native language of a learner does not
possess the phonetic feature necessary to make a distinction between two non-native
phonemes, it will be very difficult for them to learn to do so. It is possible, however, that
other factors are at play in the present study.
For example, the presence of the
consonantal [nasal] feature in English may have allowed the learners to quickly pick up
on the contrastiveness of vowels differing in terms of the vocalic version of this feature in
French. This could explain how the Nasal Group was able to overcome identification
difficulties after just one training session.
38
Another potential explanation for the difficulty that learners had with
distinguishing the front vowels of French is that there is in fact less perceptual space
between these front vowels than there is between the nasal vowels. Although Wright
(1980) found nasal vowels to be perceptually closer to each other than the corresponding
oral vowels, the nasal vowels of Canadian French are quite different from each other
despite sharing the property of nasality. [ɔ̃] and [ɛ̃] are both mid-high vowels, described
by Wright as having low perceived F1 values, but [ɔ̃] is at the back of the perceptual
space and [ɛ̃] is at the front (having a higher perceived F2). [ɑ̃], on the other hand, is a
relatively low vowel and although it is also quite far back in the perceptual space, it is
differentiated from [ɔ̃] in terms of rounding as well. In contrast, the front rounded vowels
of French are distinguished entirely based on height differences. Therefore, they may in
fact be perceptually closer to each other than was the case for the nasal vowels.
There may also be factors which account for the ease with which the participants
were able to learn to differentiate between the oral and nasal vowels used in training in
comparison with those who learned to discriminate between front rounded and unrounded
vowels. For instance, the nature of the stimuli presented to the participants may have
been such that nasality was a more salient feature of the sounds than rounding was. Since
the vowels were extracted from naturally produced words, the articulations of the
phonemes were not especially careful, despite the speakers’ efforts to be clear. This
means that the rounding of the lips may not have been as extreme as it would be in an
“ideal” rounded vowel. The oral vowel stimuli were also generally shorter than the nasal
vowels due to the contexts from which they were extracted. It is therefore possible that
the Nasal Group was picking up on length differences between the oral and nasal vowels
39
in their training; a cue that was not available to the Round Group. Finally, some of the
nasal stimuli were characterized by audible nasal stops following the vowel. These
consonantal cues would clearly indicate nasality, particularly to an English speaker
whose vowels would be nasalized in this context in the native language as well.
5.2.2 Generalization
At first glance, the above results appear to support the prediction that learning to
differentiate between oral and nasal vowels will lead to a better ability to generalize to
novel French vowels of the same system than learning front vowel distinctions. The
Nasal Group did indeed perform better on the generalization task than the Round Group
overall. Beyond these basic scores, however, the story is somewhat more complicated.
In the generalization task, the Round Group correctly identified nasal vowels and
front rounded vowels at nearly the same level of accuracy, while the Nasal Group had
noticeably lower scores for front rounded vowel identification and higher scores on nasal
vowel identification. This coincides with the finding that the Nasal Group seems to
contradict the stated hypothesis. However, it only addresses three of the seven novel
vowels to which the participants were required to apply the knowledge of the French
vowel system they had acquired through training. When the other four are taken into
account, the Nasal Group’s identification scores on this task were slightly higher than
those of the Round Group, which suggests that having learned French nasal vowels and
their corresponding oral vowels does lead to a greater ability to generalize learning to the
remainder of the inventory. Further evidence for this comes from the first exposure data.
Although both groups more accurately identified the front vowels during the session in
40
which they first heard them, the Nasal Group performed better on the vowels used to train
the Round Group than the Round Group did on the vowels used to train the Nasal Group.
It was predicted that this would be the case based on the fact that the Nasal Group
would be exposed to more variability in the training stimuli in terms of the number of
dimensions by which the vowels are differentiated. This may be true in the sense that the
participants trained to make distinctions between nasal vowels were exposed to more
variability, but perhaps it is not only the added dimension of nasality that made the
stimuli more variable. It was pointed out in 5.2.1 above that the nasal vowels that were
learned demonstrated differences in height, backness and rounding.
Adding the
corresponding oral vowels to this training meant that the Nasal Group was presented with
vowels that were discriminated along all four dimensions proposed by Wright (1980).
The Round Group, however, only learned to make height and rounding distinctions,
which does not fully represent the system they were trying to acquire. Even if the
dimension of nasality does not make nasal vowels inherently more variable than oral
vowels, the Nasal Group was exposed to a more complete picture of the French vowel
system than the Round Group. It is therefore not surprising that the former was better
able to generalize their learning to novel stimuli.
5.2.3 Confusions
Although this study did not set out to investigate the perceptual confusions
experienced by English-speaking learners of French, the mistakes made by the
participants do provide some information that may be helpful to the understanding of
vowel perception and second language learning.
41
The first important pattern demonstrated is that training on a particular type of
vowel lead to less confusion among vowels of that type. This is shown by the lower
number of misidentifications of nasal vowels as other nasal vowels by the nasal group
and the similar phenomenon in terms of the front rounded vowels for the Round Group.
Also, both groups misidentified nasal vowels as other nasal vowels more often than as
any other vowel type, which suggests that it may be perceptually easy to discern nasal
vowels from oral vowels, but the distinctions within the category are more difficult to
make. This appears to be particularly true if these vowels are unfamiliar as is indicated
by the Round Group having a very high (43.33%) confusion score within the nasal vowel
type. This is in accordance with Wright’s (1980) proposal of a smaller perceptual vowel
space for nasal vowels.
A second interesting pattern within this data is the high rate of confusion among
rounded vowels. The Round Group misidentified front rounded vowels as back rounded
more often than as a different front rounded vowel and the Nasal Group had nearly equal
numbers for both. Similarly, both groups incorrectly identified back rounded vowels as
front rounded vowels more often than any other vowel type on the generalization task.
This finding suggests that rounding is very important cue to vowel identity of English
speakers.
The large number of misidentifications of front rounded vowels as back
rounded vowels also alludes to previous findings that English speakers perceive rounded
vowels near the front of the vowel space as allophonic tokens of their native back
rounded categories (Ohala, 1981; Strange et al., 2004, 2005; Levy and Strange, 2007;
Rochet, 1995).
42
CHAPTER SIX
Conclusion
The goal of this study was to investigate English speakers’ perceptual learning of
French vowels. Specifically, differences in learning and generalization abilities between
French front rounded vowels and nasal vowels were addressed. It was found that,
contrary to the first prediction, there was a trend of faster learning of differentiation of
nasal vowels than of front rounded vowels. Supporting the second prediction, however, it
was found that training on nasal vowel discriminations led to better generalization
abilities than training on front rounded vowel discrimination.
The parameters within which this study carried out, however, did not allow for the
investigation to go into as much depth as would have been optimal, leaving many
avenues for future research available. Certainly, the small number of participants did not
allow for any valid statistical analyses to be performed, so it would be useful to realize an
experiment of the same type with a much larger sample and see if the same trends appear.
For instance, it would be helpful to compare the acoustic qualities of the stimuli
presented to the participants. This way, it could be determined if the more spectrally
similar vowels are those which were most often confused, or if, for example, the front
rounded vowels were more similar to their unrounded counterparts, despite more often
being identified as back rounded vowels, as has been found in previous studies. In
addition to this, if the perceptual space for each learner were to be computed at each
session, these could be compared with the acoustic space to see how English speakers’
perceptions of French vowels might be in discord with the physical properties of the
43
sounds.
Such representations could also provide insight into the learning process
undergone by the participants by observing changes in their perceptual vowel space from
session to session. As the learners improve their ability to distinguish among the novel
vowels, it would be expected that the perceptual space between them would increase.
Another issue that was raised in the discussion above was the possibility that
learners were using differences in the length of the stimulus to differentiate the nasal
vowels from the oral vowels. It would be valuable to perform a similar studied in which
the length of the stimuli was controlled in order to eliminate the effect of this variable. If
the nasal vowels are still distinguished more easily than the front rounded vowels, then
we will have more concrete evidence that nasality is a more salient clue to vowel identity
than rounding, even in terms of unfamiliar sounds.
Finally, it was suggested that the Nasal Group was better able to generalize what
they had learned in training to novel stimuli because their training made use of more
distinctions present in the complete French vowel system than that of the Round Group.
The difference was not necessarily due to the presence of the nasality giving the stimuli
more inherent variability. In order to confirm this, it would be interesting to train English
speakers to differentiate among only the oral vowels of French, having some learn only
front (or back) vowels and the others learn vowels at varying places within the vowel
space.
It is likely that the second group would demonstrate similar learning and
generalization patterns to the Nasal Group in the present study.
What has been learned from this project is that there is an apparent difference in
the progression of perceptual learning of French front rounded vowels and nasal vowels
by native English speakers. These findings indicate that there may be differences in the
44
acquisition of other types of speech sounds as well, which could have an important
impact on the field of second language instruction. If it can be determined which types of
sounds will be more difficult to learn, instructors could focus more time and attention on
helping their students to learn these distinctions. It is also quite likely that, similarly to
the French vowels investigated, the acquisition of certain types of sounds in other
languages would lead to better generalization of learning to the rest of the system being
acquired. Instructors could use this information to decide what sound contrasts should be
taught first in order to maximize learning of the entire system. Although the present
study simply showed general trends, it does demonstrate that there is more important
research to be done on this topic.
45
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Greenspan, Steven L., Howard C. Nusbaum & David B. Pisoni. (1988). Perceptual
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47
Appendix A
French word lists
[u]
[y]
[e]
[ø]
1. toute
2. boue
3. roue
4. sou
5. trou
6. clou
7. coup
8. fou
9. loup
10. joue
11. nous
12. mou
13. doute
14. route
15. croûte
16. douze
17. foule
18. trouve
19. ouvre
20. outre
21. rouge
22. bouche
23. roule
24. poule
25. bouge
26. jour
27. groupe
28. soupe
1. tu
2. but
3. rue
4. plu
5. nu
6. su
7. cru
8. dû
9. lu
10. pu
11. flute
12. lune
13. une
14. vue
15. cure
16. jure
17. cruche
18. juste
19. juge
20. cube
21. tube
22. sûr
23. sud
24. jupe
25. fume
26. tu
1. dé
2. baie
3. clé
4. gré
5. et
6. né
7. ses
8. thé
9. blé
10. fée
11. bée
12. mes
13. les
14. chez
15. pré
16. crée
17. hé
18. nez
19. scier
20. gémir
21. détente
22. pédale
23. école
24. credit
25. régler
26. dé
1. peu
2. boeufs
3. oeufs
4. creux
5. voeux
6. deux
7. feu
8. jeux
9. ceux
10. bleu
11. feutre
12. creuse
13. veule
14. jeudi
15. jeûne
16. dieu
17. yeux
18. meule
19. meugle
20. neutre
21. freux
22. vieux
23. pleut
24. preux
25. queue
26. peu
48
[ɛ]
[œ]
[o]
[a]
1. lait
2. près
3. mais
4. frais
5. fraîche
6. faite
7. craie
8. vrai
9. vais
10. jet
11. vert
12. maître
13. verse
14. treize
15. belle
16. mere
17. sèche
18. fleche
19. haine
20. gêne
21. reine
22. peigne
23. père
24. frère
25. air
26. messe
27. ferme
28. bête
1. soeur
2. peur
3. fleur
4. beurre
5. coeur
6. moeurs
7. pleure
8. heure
9. feuille
10. heure
11. veuf
12. veuve
13. oeuvre
14. oeuf
15. neuf
16. jeune
17. meurtre
18. meuble
19. preuve
20. leur
21. fleuve
22. neuve
23. heurte
24. people
25. seul
26. soeur
1. beau
2. trop
3. flot
4. pot
5. sceau
6. faute
7. haute
8. mot
9. faux
10. faune
11. côte
12. chaude
13. taupe
14. rose
15. jaune
16. role
17. fausse
18. hausse
19. paume
20. trône
21. pole
22. drôle
23. prône
24. baume
25. grosse
26. beau
1. ma
2. sa
3. la
4. ta
5. plate
6. gratte
7. panne
8. page
9. rage
10. cage
11. date
12. hache
13. rat
14. table
15. natte
16. nappe
17. frappe
18. parc
19. par
20. sacre
21. sage
22. plage
23. plaque
24. masque
25. dame
26. lame
49
[i]
1. prix
2. scie
3. pli
4. fie
5. tire
6. rire
7. cire
8. dire
9. pige
10. tige
11. rive
12. qui
13. riz
14. dîne
15. fil
16. cri
17. risque
18. disque
19. ski
20. quitte
21. tigre
22. tilde
23. pile
24. dit
25. digne
26. gris
[ɔ]
1. flotte
2. frotte
3. grotte
4. sort
5. poste
6. folle
7. colle
8. molle
9. choc
10. bord
11. vol
12. sol
13. robe
14. roche
15. poche
16. mort
17. corde
18. forte
19. forme
20. cloche
21. bloc
22. croquet
23. croche
24. flore
25. score
26. flotte
[ɛ̃]
1. plainte
2. crainte
3. grain
4. freins
5. seins
6. bain
7. train
8. gain
9. peintre
10. sainte
11. peindre
12. craindre
13. singe
14. grimpe
15. timbre
16. thym
17. pince
18. rince
19. pin
20. dinde
21. vin
22. Inde
23. cinq
24. cingle
25. mince
26. rein
[ɑ̃]
1. gens
2. gant
3. plante
4. trente
5. fente
6. dent
7. cent
8. blanc(he)
9. banc
10. franc(he)
11. lent(e)
12. hante
13. fendre
14. cendre
15. change
16. mange
17. branche
18. plan
19. menthe
20. pln
21. menthe
22. langue
23. fente
24. pente
25. danse
26. chamber
27. membre
50
[ɔ̃]
1. honte
2. compte
3. front
4. plomb
5. son
6. tondre
7. fondre
8. vont
9. long
10. pont
11. monde
12. ronde
13. plonge
14. onze
15. songe
16. ronge
17. blonde
18. trompe
19. pompe
20. bronze
21. tronc
22. prompte
23. ton
24. mon
25. onde
26. non
51
Appendix B
Confusion matrices for all six participants over three training sessions and generalization
task (raw numbers)
Round Group
Participant 1
Session 1
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
6
6
2
2
1
0
eu
5
2
1
3
3
1
i
3
5
7
2
4
4
oe
y
4
4
0
10
1
1
1
1
0
1
9
0
1
2
10
2
2
14
Session 2
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
4
5
1
4
1
1
eu
2
5
4
1
6
0
i
1
0
10
1
4
3
oe
6
7
0
13
0
0
y
7
3
0
1
7
0
0
0
5
0
2
16
Session 3
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
7
3
1
7
1
1
eu
2
7
1
1
5
0
i
0
0
8
1
3
9
oe
6
8
0
10
0
0
y
5
2
0
1
11
0
0
0
10
0
0
10
52
Generalization
a
an
e
eh
eu
i
in
o
oe
oh
on
u
y
e
0
0
6
1
3
1
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
eh
1
0
0
0
0
1
6
0
0
1
0
0
0
eu
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
i
1
0
2
3
1
5
0
0
2
0
0
0
1
oe
4
0
1
2
0
0
0
0
2
1
0
0
0
y
0
0
0
0
3
1
0
0
0
1
0
5
8
a
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
1
0
an
2
5
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
2
4
1
0
in
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
o
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
7
1
0
2
1
0
oh
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
2
1
0
0
0
on
0
5
0
0
0
0
4
3
0
1
3
0
0
u
2
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
2
0
Participant 2
Session 1
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
3
0
1
2
2
3
eu
4
6
1
1
2
0
i
3
1
8
4
5
5
oe
1
3
1
4
1
1
y
5
10
1
2
9
0
4
0
8
7
1
11
Session 2
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
10
2
0
9
2
0
eu
3
6
1
2
0
1
i
0
0
7
0
3
10
oe
4
1
0
5
2
0
y
3
11
1
2
9
1
0
0
11
2
4
8
53
Session 3
e
eh
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
5
2
0
7
0
0
eu
3
7
0
5
1
0
i
0
0
9
1
3
6
oe
3
2
0
5
0
0
y
9
9
0
1
11
0
0
0
11
1
5
14
Generalization
a
an
e
eh
eu
i
in
o
oe
oh
on
u
y
e
0
0
5
0
0
7
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
eh
0
0
2
4
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
eu
1
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
i
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
oe
5
1
3
2
0
0
0
0
3
4
0
0
0
y
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
5
a
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
an
0
2
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
in
0
1
0
0
0
2
3
0
1
1
0
0
0
o
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
8
0
0
2
2
0
oh
1
0
0
3
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
on
0
5
0
0
0
0
1
1
2
0
3
0
0
u
1
1
0
0
4
0
0
1
1
2
3
6
3
Participant 3
Session 1
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
13
6
1
4
6
0
eu
0
6
2
0
6
0
i
1
2
7
0
1
7
oe
6
2
1
15
0
1
y
0
4
3
1
5
0
0
0
6
0
2
12
54
Session 2
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
14
2
0
0
0
0
eu
3
8
3
1
2
0
i
oe
0
2
8
1
1
11
3
1
1
16
2
0
y
0
7
1
0
14
0
0
0
7
2
1
9
Session 3
e
e
eh
eu
i
oe
y
eh
12
0
0
10
0
0
eu
4
14
1
0
1
0
i
oe
0
0
9
0
2
11
4
0
1
10
0
0
y
0
6
1
0
15
0
0
0
8
0
2
9
Generalization
a
an
e
eh
eu
i
in
o
oe
oh
on
u
y
e
0
0
7
0
0
1
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
eh
0
0
0
3
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
eu
0
0
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
4
i
0
0
1
0
0
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
oe
2
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
5
0
0
0
y
0
0
0
0
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
a
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
2
1
0
0
0
an
1
7
0
0
0
1
3
0
0
1
2
0
0
in
2
0
1
2
0
0
4
0
1
0
3
0
1
o
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
10
0
1
0
2
0
oh
5
0
0
2
1
1
0
0
3
1
1
1
0
on
0
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
3
0
0
u
0
0
0
1
2
0
0
0
2
0
1
4
4
55
Nasal Group
Participant 1
Session 1
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
4
3
5
0
5
4
eh
0
4
2
8
0
6
in
5
3
5
5
4
0
oh
3
0
0
3
2
4
on
7
6
4
2
9
1
1
4
4
2
0
5
Session 2
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
16
1
2
1
3
0
eh
1
14
1
0
5
1
in
3
0
9
1
2
0
oh
0
0
5
17
0
0
on
0
2
2
1
10
2
0
3
1
0
0
17
Session 3
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
9
0
3
0
4
3
eh
0
18
0
0
0
2
in
10
0
16
0
0
0
oh
0
0
0
20
0
0
on
1
1
1
0
16
1
0
1
0
0
0
14
56
Generalization
a
an
e
eh
eu
i
in
o
oe
oh
on
u
y
a
7
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
an
1
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
3
1
0
0
eh
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
in
0
0
3
0
0
0
10
0
0
0
0
0
0
oh
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
2
on
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
7
0
0
e
0
0
3
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
eu
0
0
1
0
3
0
0
0
0
3
0
1
1
i
0
0
3
0
2
7
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
oe
2
1
0
0
2
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
y
0
1
0
0
2
2
0
1
2
1
0
0
1
o
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
7
1
0
2
1
0
u
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
8
4
Participant 2
Session 1
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
3
3
2
4
2
4
eh
2
2
6
4
4
5
in
4
2
2
6
1
0
oh
4
1
4
2
4
4
on
5
6
3
2
4
5
2
6
3
2
5
2
Session 2
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
2
1
3
4
3
3
eh
3
1
1
3
4
2
in
3
5
3
2
3
4
oh
2
6
4
2
6
4
on
8
7
6
7
3
5
2
0
3
2
1
2
57
Session 3
a
an
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
5
1
2
3
2
1
eh
1
3
3
3
3
1
in
2
4
2
5
3
6
oh
3
3
4
0
2
1
on
6
6
6
5
4
6
3
3
3
4
6
5
Generalization
a
an
e
eh
eu
i
in
o
oe
oh
on
u
y
a
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
2
0
0
0
an
0
7
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
eh
4
0
2
4
0
0
5
0
3
2
0
0
0
in
0
2
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
oh
2
1
0
0
0
3
1
0
1
4
1
3
1
on
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
6
0
0
e
0
0
3
1
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
eu
0
0
1
3
5
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
i
2
0
2
0
1
3
2
0
1
0
1
0
0
oe
1
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
4
y
0
0
0
1
2
1
0
0
2
1
0
1
0
o
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
7
0
1
1
1
1
u
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
5
2
Participant 3
Session 1
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
9
3
8
1
5
0
eh
2
2
3
2
6
5
in
4
3
5
5
1
2
oh
1
3
0
8
0
3
on
3
0
2
2
6
3
1
9
2
2
2
7
58
Session 2
a
an
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
13
0
8
1
3
0
eh
0
11
1
1
0
6
in
7
0
10
3
4
1
oh
0
0
0
13
0
1
on
0
0
0
0
13
2
0
9
1
2
0
10
Session 3
a
a
an
eh
in
oh
on
an
14
0
18
4
0
0
eh
1
4
0
1
0
1
in
2
0
1
0
0
0
oh
0
6
1
15
0
4
on
2
0
0
0
20
0
1
10
0
0
0
15
Generalization
a
an
e
eh
eu
i
in
o
oe
oh
on
u
y
a
10
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
an
0
5
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
2
0
0
eh
0
1
1
4
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
in
0
0
0
0
0
0
10
0
0
0
2
0
0
oh
0
0
0
0
2
1
0
2
1
7
0
0
0
on
0
3
0
0
0
0
0
2
0
0
6
0
0
e
0
0
5
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
eu
0
0
0
1
4
0
0
1
0
0
0
5
6
i
0
1
2
0
0
8
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
oe
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
2
1
0
0
0
y
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
2
3
o
0
0
1
0
2
0
0
1
1
0
0
1
0
u
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
2
1
59