Contrastive phonetics We speak in order to be heard and need to be heard in order to be understood. (Jakobson & Waugh 1979: 96-7)

Difference between phonetics and phonology: Phonology: greek phone = voice/sound AND logos = word/speech Phonology: subfield of linguistics closely linked with phonetics

Phonology describes the way sounds function (within a given lang or across lang)

Phonetics is about physical production and perception of sounds

/p/ and /b/ distinctive sounds in E (phonemes) [p] [b] pronounced diff depending placement. Phonological theory: applied to the analysis of signed languages

Phonemes and spelling• Lang directly linked to spelling, i.e. a phoneme is represented by a graphical symbol or combination of them (a letter or letter combination

• Deschamps 2004 chap 5 ‘english phonology and graphophonemics of E »

• One phoneme = one symbol??? Not really in E and F

• Letters are not pronounced (doux, spring)• Some sounds are represented with letterS (scène, laisse, mention, dubbing)

• Some letters are represented with soundS (taxi, care…)

• LETTERS: 26 in F (with diacritics 30, 40), 26 in E

• Phonetics units: 10-16 vowels in F and 18-24 in E

• Graphophonemics units: charts

Phoneme inventory: look for minimal pairs• When two sounds constitute separate phonemes: minimal pair

• Otherwise called allophones of the same underlying phoneme (/p/, /t/, /k/ can be aspirated) (Cantonese and Thai [p] and [ph] are separate phonemes

Change of phoneme inventory over time: At one point, [f] and [v] were allophones in English, and these changed later into separate phonemes (French influence on English after the Norman Conquest).

Other language features studied in phonology• Stress (‘increase, to in’crease, p106 Ginésy 2000), intonation (F ‘langue à frontières Vaissière 1991) and E stress-time lang

Native language, second lang, foreign lang

• Native language: first language acquired, the socializing lang

• For Grosjean « bilinguals are those who use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives » Grosjean (2010: 22) , and multilinguals, the native language remains the most important one.

Grosjean (ibid. : 25) age, sex, socioeconomic status, occupation + the 2 lang in contact and relation, when and how they were learnt, how did the speaker use them (function: why, how often …), level of the speaker (4 skills), biculturalism.

• In E we do not use ‘First lang’ term contrary to F

• F Langue Première: do not convey affection contrary to mother tongue . Ou selon Cuq « dimensions affectives que suppose le rapport au langage de la relation mère/enfant » ni les « problèmes afférents à l’appartenance communautaire et à la construction identitaire »(Cuq 2003 : 151).

Difference between second language and foreign lang: • second lang : you live in the very country of that second lang.

• foreign lang is when you learn English in France. • Foreign lang: Klein (1989 : 33) la définit comme la « langue qui est apprise en dehors de son aire d’usage habituelle, en général en classe de langue, et qui n’est pas utilisée en concurrence avec la langue maternelle pour les communications quotidiennes. »

Processing speech in a second language/foreign lang• De l’oral à l’écrit, il y a un monde. La différence est si grande que la description

du français oral ressemble plus souvent à celle d’une langue exotique qu’à celle du français écrit. (Morel & Danon-Boileau 1998:7)

focus on the perception and acquisition of L2 phonological systems • the very processing strategies that render so efficient the comprehension of our native language can paradoxically hinder the aural comprehension of a L2 acquired later in life.

Age effects in phonological processing• Infants are born with acute sensitivity to speech sounds

• infants extremely adept at discriminating speech sounds in the early months of life (e.g. Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk & Vogorito 1971; see also Jusczyk 1997)

• Infants of six months are able to distinguish contrasts from languages to which they have never been exposed in addition to contrasts from the ambient language.

• Example : Infants born to English-speaking parents discriminate dental /t/ versus retroflex /t/, a phonemic contrast that exists in Hindi but not in English (Werker & Tees 1984; see also Werker & Tees 1999)

• Eimas (1975) among others suggested that infants are born endowed with innate ‘phonetic feature detectors’ endowing them with sensitivity to all possible speech sounds.

• BUT by the end of the first year of life, the ability to perceive segmental contrasts diminishes as the infant perceptual system abandons or prunes away those phonetic features which are not contrastive in the native language.

• Example: For example, Werker and Tees (1984) showed that English-learning infants lost the ability to discriminate the Hindi /t/ contrast referred to above by the age of 12 months.

• Example: 6 months japanese speaking infants of 6 months disciminate /r,l/ but no longer at 12 and adults.

Finally: • sensitivity to non-native contrasts diminishes at this point in development,

• the ability to discriminate native categorical contrasts is sharpened,

• indicating further refinement of the L1 phonology (Kuhl, Stevens, Hayashi, Deguchi, Kiritani & Iverson 2006; Polka, Colantino & Sundara 2001; Rivera-Gaxiola, Silva- Pereyra & Kuhl 2005).

At the suprasegmental level a similar sharpening of perception occurs. • infants develop sensitivity to rhythmic structure before acquiring segmental knowledge (womb)

• Initially, newborns can discriminate languages that differ in basic rhythmic structure.

• Example: discrimination has been demonstrated between a stress-based language such as English and a mora-based language such as Japanese (Nazzi et al. 1998; see also Nazzi & Ramus 2003)

BUT infants cannot discriminate languages that exhibit similar metrical structures:

• between French and Spanish, which are both syllable-based (Mehler et al. 1988)

• or English and Dutch, which are both stress-based (Nazzi et al. 1998).

A preference for the rhythmic structure of the mother tongue emerges between six and nine months.

Once an infant has acquired sensitivity to phonemic contrasts and rhythmic structure, the next challenge is to extract individual words from the speech stream.

Cutler (2001) pointed out that the pruning of the phonological perception of segmental contrasts that occurs around one year corresponds to the learning of a child’s first words.

START focusing only on contrasts which are linguistically relevant in the mother tongue.

• As the infant perceptual system becomes attuned to the phonological properties of the L1, infants become in effect 'adult listeners' very soon.

• The domain of L2 acquisition has long been centered on the effects of maturation on L2 attainment as predicted by the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH; Lenneberg 1967).

CPH: • nativelike attainment of language is out of reach

when sensitivity is lost• Coincide with puberty• Lang acquisition prior to closure period =

nativelike ling competence• if acquisition begins after closure, deficits are

assumed unavoidable according to Lenneberg (1967).

Becoming adult listeners

Different opinions about closure period:• a progressive lateralization of cerebral function and a subsequent loss of plasticity (Lenneberg 1967)

• an irrevocable loss of access to Universal Grammar (Bley-Vroman 1989)

Def: Cette grammaire contient alors à la fois la spécification de l’ensemble des principes qui rendent compte des similitudes entre les langues et celle des paramètres qui attestent de la variation qui les différencie (Di Cristo, 2004, 5).• an increase in the sophistication of cognitive function that is detrimental to language learning (Newport 1990)

• the dismantling of neural circuitry needed for language learning in order to cut metabolic costs (Pinker 1994)

• the atrophying of the language acquisition facility due to lack of use (Bever 1981)

• the increasing strength of established L1 neural connections which inhibits the laying down of novel neural pathways in the L2 (McClelland 1996; Elman et al. 1996)

• See Birdsong (1999) as well as Bowden, Sanz and Stafford (2005) for CP effects

However, numerous studies have demonstrated that this prediction does not accurately reflect observed patterns of learning outcomes (see Birdsong 2006 for a review). • More realistic: a gradual post-maturational linear decline in sensitivity than by an abrupt drop after CP

The slope of this decline can vary:• the L1/L2 pairing• the amount of L2use in relation to L1 use• amount of education in the L2• language dominance

Birdsong 1998; Bongaerts 1999; Flege 1999; Flege & Liu 2001; Golato 2002 and Piske, MacKay & Flege 2001 for discussion of these and other factors

Some have included the notion of• a ‘sensitive’ or a ‘maturational’ period (Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson 2003),

• or even an ‘optimal’ period (Werker & Tees 2005),

= implying that during this period the acquisitional system experiences heightened sensitivity to language input.

INDEED • Birdsong (2006) reports rates of nativelike attainment ranging from 0% to 45% of participants in 20 studies testing participants across several linguistic domains (effects of age on L2 acquisition)

BUT • he noticed nativelike behavior in morphosyntax but nativelike pronunciation is less frequent when L2 exposure begins in adulthood.

• The domain of phonology is thought to be particularly sensitive to the effects of age (Long 1990; Scovel 1988).

• Some researchers have even suggested that there is a domain specific CP for phonology that terminates earlier than CPs for other linguistic domains (Moyer 1999; Singleton & Ryan 2004; see also Pallier, Bosch & Sebastian-Galles 1997).

• Example: 240 native Korean speakers ranging in age of arrival (AOA) in the United States from 1-23 years (Flege, Yeni-Komshian and Liu 1999)

• degree of foreign accent was significantly more affected by AOA than grammatical skills

• As AOA increased, foreign accents steadily grew stronger

• morphosyntactic knowledge correlated more with education level and amount of L2 use

BUT • Bongaerts, Mennen and van der Slik (2000) demonstrated a nativelike accent, that is, L2 speech that is judged indiscernible from that of native speakers, is attainable.

Birdsong (2003; 2007) English-speaking learners of French were deemed indistinguishable from native controls. Learners had biographical factors in common:• all had undertaken phonetic or diction training

• all had expressed high motivation to integrate into the L2 culture and pass for native speakers

THUS it demonstrates that age is not the sole determinant of degree of foreign accent.