Perceptual confusability of French nasal vowels

Abstract

The present study investigated native and non-native speakers' perception of the French nasal vowels [ε̃-õ- ɑ̃] and the oral vowel [o]. Thirty-four L1 American English intermediate learners of French and thirty-four French native speakers were asked to identify 60 one-syllable word items containing the four vowels [ε̃-õ-ɑ̃-o] in word-final position produced by a native speaker and randomly distributed across three conditions: audio-only, audio-visual and visual-only. Identification results revealed that overall performance was better in audio-visual and audio than in visual condition and that non-native speakers showed greater identification for [õ]\ than for [ε̃] and poorer identification for [ɑ]. A confusion matrix revealed that across conditions, the vowel [ɑ] resulted in the most misidentification and was often mistaken for [ɑ]. For both native and non-native speakers [õ] was sometimes confused with its oral counterpart [o]. The data also indicate different patterns of identification of the three nasal vowels in the three conditions. For instance the visual condition was particularly helpful for identifying [ɑ]. The obtained results will be discussed in relation to existing second language acquisition research studies.