Differential contribution of prosodic cues in the native and non-native segmentation of French speech

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Issue Date
2012-11-01Author
Tremblay, Annie
Coughlin, Caitlin E.
Bahler, Carly
Gaillard, Stephanie
Publisher
De Gruyter Open
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
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This study investigates the use of prosodic information in the segmentation of French speech by mid-level and high-level English second/foreign language (L2) learners of French and native French listeners. The results of two word-monitoring tasks, one with natural stimuli and one with resynthesized stimuli, show that as L2 learners become more proficient in French, they go from parsing accented syllables as word-initial to parsing them as word-final, but unlike native listeners, they use duration increase but not fundamental frequencyx (F0) rise as a cue to word-final boundaries. These results are attributed to: (1) the L2 learners' native language, in which F0 rise is a reliable cue to word-initial boundaries but not word-final boundaries; (2) the co-occurrence of F0 and duration cues in word-final syllables in French, rendering L2 learners' use of F0 rise unnecessary for locating word-final boundaries; and (3) the optional marking of word-initial boundaries by F0 cues in French, thus making it difficult for non-native listeners to tease the two types of F0 rise apart. We argue that these factors prevent English listeners from attending to F0 rise as a cue to word-final boundaries in French, irrespective of their proficiency in French.
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This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lp-2012-0018.
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Citation
Tremblay, Annie., Coughlin, Caitlin E., Bahler, Carly., Gaillard, Stephanie. "Differential contribution of prosodic cues in the native and non-native segmentation of French speech." Laboratory Phonology. Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 385–423. (2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lp-2012-0018.
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