This study investigates upper lip protrusion during selected French utterances as produced by six native French speakers. A photocell, incorporated into a headpiece, was used to transduce upper lip movement into an electrical signal which was then amplified and displayed on a graphic recorder. Utterances included a) VCV utterances; b) utterances containing the consonant clusters /rstr/, /rskr/, /kstr/ and /strstr/; c) utterances containing the segments /i/ and /u/ in sequence or separated, in various combinations, by a consonant and/or word boundary; d) utterances produced with an increasing degree of emphatic stress; and e) utterances produced at an increasing rate. Three aspects of the protrusion gesture are examined: extent of protrusion, velocity, transition time, and the relations between them. Results indicate differences between these three measures for the production of /u/ as compared to /y/, as well as differences when upper lip movement is directed away from target protrusion position as compared to when it is directed toward target protrusion position. Results also indicate how the three measures are affected by the following: insertion of a consonant and/or word boundary between /i/ and /u/ in the /i/-/u/ utterances; increase in level of stress on the syllable containing the rounded vowel /u/; and increase in rate of speaking. This study also includes an attempt to determine onset of protrusion in a consonant cluster followed by a rounded vowel. It is hypothesized that the extent of coarticulation of upper lip protrusion might provide some useful information concerning a discrete unit in terms of which speech may be produced at the articulatory level. Results show that such a unit may be composed of either a VCC...V or CC...V group. The possibility of coarticulation of upper lip protrusion being language-dependent as well as the possibility of coarticulation patterns differing for the upper and lower lip is discussed. Results are also related to various models of speech production although they do not appear to strongly support any one model. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

The present study investigates the perceivability of coartic-ulated lip rounding in French. Nine utterances containing the clusters /kstr/,/rstr/, and /rskr/ followed by one of the vowels /i/, /y/, or /u/ in all possible combinations, were truncated at 4 different points before the vowel. Test items in each of the 4 groups therefore contained different amounts of information regarding the nature of the following vowel, due to coarticulatory influences of the vowel on the preceding consonants. Subjects were asked to predict the identity of the missing vowel on hearing the truncated utterances. Subjects were native speakers of either French or English; some of them had a knowledge of phonetics. Results show that when segments up to and including at least half of the final consonant of the cluster are present, subjects correctly identify the missing vowel well above chance levels. Several individuals were able to identify the vowel even when presented with shorter versions of the utterances. No significant difference in performance was found between French and English subjects, nor between subjects with and without phonetic training. Perceivability of individual features of the missing vowel is discussed. It is concluded that coarticulatory effects due to lip rounding (as well as to horizontal tongue position) provide perceivable information at a level significantly above chance, and that this information may be used by the perceptual mechanism as an aid in speech sound identification. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

Following a review of the literature on French immersion, this thesis considers the implications of the systematic transcription of oral texts for linguistic analysis. In transcribing a corpus of spoken French by children attending a French immersion school and a corpus of children from Quebec (both from tape recordings and included in the appendice), the transcription conventions proposed by the Groupe Aixois de Recherche en Syntaxe were applied. In chapter III, some of the most common deviations from the norm that occur in the French immersion corpus are discussed, and for the most part these aberrations reflect the results of previous error analyses done on second language learners. In chapters IV and V, a study of "slip-ups" is undertaken. Slip-ups are repetitions or self-corrections, referred to as "rates" in this thesis. They occur frequently both in the Francophone and French immersion corpus. The purpose of this study is to analyse the intrinsic structure of these hesitations (that were previously brushed off as un-grammatical) and to discover whether the repetitions or self-corrections produced by the French immersion speakers share characteristics with or differ from the slip-ups identified in the Francophone corpus. Whereas an enumeration of grammatical errors will almost always show that the French spoken by French immersion pupils is not as "good" as that spoken by Francophone children, the analysis of slip-ups is a more objective endeavor. And indeed, the study reveals some unpredicted results. On certain parts of the sentence, such as the predicate, French native speakers surprisingly slip up more often than French immersion children, while the latter tend to hesitate more often on subjects and indirect objects. Further analysis reveals that native French speakers almost always repeat (or correct) entire word groups, or syntagms, although they don't always complete such groups. The French immersion children, on the other hand, do not always repeat the entire word group when they slip up, but they do seem to finish their construction (or sentence), once it has started. Finally, the situation (formal or informal) appeared to only affect the speakers in the Francophone corpus: they hesitated slightly more often in a formal setting, whereas the situation did not seem to affect the results for the French immersion speakers.

Following a review of the literature on French immersion, this thesis considers the implications of the systematic transcription of oral texts for linguistic analysis. In transcribing a corpus of spoken French by children attending a French immersion school and a corpus of children from Quebec (both from tape recordings and included in the appendice), the transcription conventions proposed by the Groupe Aixois de Recherche en Syntaxe were applied. In chapter III, some of the most common deviations from the norm that occur in the French immersion corpus are discussed, and for the most part these aberrations reflect the results of previous error analyses done on second language learners. In chapters IV and V, a study of "slip-ups" is undertaken. Slip-ups are repetitions or self-corrections, referred to as "rates" in this thesis. They occur frequently both in the Francophone and French immersion corpus. The purpose of this study is to analyse the intrinsic structure of these hesitations (that were previously brushed off as un-grammatical) and to discover whether the repetitions or self-corrections produced by the French immersion speakers share characteristics with or differ from the slip-ups identified in the Francophone corpus. Whereas an enumeration of grammatical errors will almost always show that the French spoken by French immersion pupils is not as "good" as that spoken by Francophone children, the analysis of slip-ups is a more objective endeavor. And indeed, the study reveals some unpredicted results. On certain parts of the sentence, such as the predicate, French native speakers surprisingly slip up more often than French immersion children, while the latter tend to hesitate more often on subjects and indirect objects. Further analysis reveals that native French speakers almost always repeat (or correct) entire word groups, or syntagms, although they don't always complete such groups. The French immersion children, on the other hand, do not always repeat the entire word group when they slip up, but they do seem to finish their construction (or sentence), once it has started. Finally, the situation (formal or informal) appeared to only affect the speakers in the Francophone corpus: they hesitated slightly more often in a formal setting, whereas the situation did not seem to affect the results for the French immersion speakers. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

This study is an examination of the effectiveness of a method of teaching French phonics at the junior high school level and its effect in reducing the dangers of using the printed word from the beginning of language study. Fifty-two grade IX students with no previous experience of French were taught a specially written ten week course using the mimicry-memorization method of learning sentence patterns in French. One group, the "two impression" group, studied this material with only oral-auditory stimuli, seeing only the English equivalent of the French they were expected to know. The other group, the "four impression" group, learned the same material by the oral, auditory, visual and kinesthetic stimuli since from the first lesson they saw and copied the French spelling after doing oral auditory drill. Special care was taken in drilling the latter group in the French orthographic system and in its phonetic basis. Students were expected in this way to "overlearn" the unit on French phonics in an attempt to reduce the English-type mispronunciation that could be expected. From the two groups were selected matched pairs using the following criteria for purposes of matching: first, I.Q.; secondly, the current year's grades on the June examinations in English language, Science, Mathematics and Social Studies; and lastly musical aptitude. Groups had equal number of boys and girls. Tests were administered in auditory comprehension, in oral translation from English into French, and in pronunciation of French. A comparison of the means at the end of the ten week course showed a slight difference in favour of the two impression group in auditory comprehension and in favour of the four impression group in oral translation and pronunciation. None of these differences was significant at the 5% level. The analysis of type and number of errors in the pronunciation test showed that those who saw the French had slightly more errors of pronunciation which seemed to be caused by interference from the English orthographic system. There were twice as many errors of this type in the four impression group as in the two impression group. These mistakes represented only six per cent of the total number of mistakes made. It was noted that those who had seen no French spelling still tended to mispronounce some French words in an English way. It is concluded that the overlearning of French phonics appeared to have overcome what disadvantage might be expected to accrue from the teaching of French using the written word from the beginning. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

There has been some research in recent years which has attempted to demonstrate the effect of needs, attitudes and stereotyped beliefs on social judgements and perception (see, for instance , Secord,1959). One type of experimental design that highlights the role that such factors play in perception consists of observing and comparing the reactions of a subject when presented with the same stimulus under different labelling conditions .

D.Litt. et Phil. / The final objective of this study involves the acquisition of received French pronunciation on the part of native speakers of siSwati. However, considering the sole aspect of phoneticophonological competence in the context of foreign language learning needs to be justified. Hence, we explain which role phonology plays in contemporary linguistics (chapter I). Further, we commit ourselves in chapter II to accommodating foreign language phonology in the framework of contrastive linguistics. This results in testing the development of foreign language pronunciation against the contrastive analysis hypothesis. To support this, we evaluate the degree to which L2 learners inherit the well-established phonological representation of Ll in their attempt to communicate in a foreign language. Secondly, we are convinced that it is needful to consider the way in which our learners decode phonological intelligibility into observable phonetic facts. This leads us to analyse the physioacoustic "surface" features of our learners' basis of articulation. Accordingly, we justify why the analysis and comparison of the phonological systems involved are to be complemented by experimental analyses of the recorded speech data. The formant tracking of the vowels and selected spectrographic analyses of the consonants in chapters IV, V and VI allow us to show to what extent the phonological abstract of the languages involved are decoded differently according to the respective bases of articulation. To achieve this, we rely on adequate experimental analyses and 'statistical tests. The first Part of chapter V identifies and compares the vowel qualities of the two languages by means of their first two formants, while the second part investigates the spectrographic differences between the siSwati and French consonant charts. To become familiar with the physio-acoustic characteristics of the target language, we introduce the French articulatory setting in chapter VII. Turning to the final aim of our contrastive and corrective undertaking, we need to select the most beneficial method of diagnosing the characteristics of our learners' foreign accent. Moreover, we design corrective strategies that will help our learners attain faithful speech performance in the targetlanguage community. Therefore, chapter III assesses the extent to which the verbo-tonal method of corrective phonetics can be instrumental in overcoming siSwati-induced French. Further, the error analysis of the recorded interlanguage discourse results in designing ad hoc corrective strategies to be implemented (chapter VIII).

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished