Soutenance de thèse

Late bilingual perception of phonetic and sociophonetic cues

Intervenant(s)
Megan Dailey
Informations pratiques
26 mars 2024
14h30
Lieu

ENS, salle Emile Borel, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris

LSCP

Jury members:

  • Sharon Peperkamp (Directrice de thèse), CNRS, ENS - PSL 
  • Isabelle Darcy (Rapporteuse), Indiana University
  • Sophie Wauquier (Rapporteuse), Université Paris 8
  • Emmanuel Ferragne (Examinateur), Université Paris Cité
  • Jeremy Kuhn (Examinateur), CNRS, ENS - PSL
 
Abstract: 

Late bilingual (L2) speech perception is shaped by the native language (L1) sound system. Equipped with a sensitivity to L1 sound patterns developed in infancy, late bilinguals must contend with the variable nature of speech in their second language for successful word recognition. It is well-known that L2 speech perception is often hampered by a lack of sensitivity to acoustic cues relevant to distinguish L2 sounds, though there is relatively less work on L2 processing of subphonemic variation. Additionally, languages show socially-conditioned variation, including at the phonetic level, and very little is known about the effect of such variation on L2 speech perception. The aim of this dissertation is to extend our knowledge of late bilingual perception of both phonetic and sociophonetic cues. The first set of experiments investigates L1 French listeners’ sensitivity to and use of English allophonic vowel nasality (e.g., man [mæ̃n] vs. mad [mæd]) during word recognition. Results revealed that French listeners have learned the allophonic distribution and use it to rule out lexical competitors in online word recognition, just as native English listeners do. The second set of experiments explores L1 and L2 French listeners’ perception of two sociophonetic cues to register in Metropolitan French: optional liaison, a stereotyped cue to formal speech (e.g., plats‿italiens [pla.zi.ta.ljɛ̃] for plats italiens [pla.i.ta.ljɛ̃] ‘Italian dishes’) and post-obstruent liquid deletion, a non-stereotyped cue to everyday speech (e.g., tab’ [tab] for table /tabl/ ‘table’), with matched-guise perception tasks. While L1 listeners demonstrated both explicit and implicit association of optional liaison with formal speech (i.e., with and without noticing the presence of optional liaison in the speech stimuli), sociolinguistic perception of optional liaison hinged on explicit noticing for L2 French listeners. In contrast, both L1 and L2 listeners exhibited almost exclusively implicit association of liquid deletion with everyday speech. Taken together, results from this dissertation display the potential for future research on L2 perception of phonetic variation, and highlight the need for updated models of L2 speech perception that account for L2 listener sensitivity to phonetic and sociophonetic cues.