Second langauge production of French mid and high vowels: An articulatory perspective

This study uses Ultrasound Tongue Imaging and acoustic data to investigate the articulatory strategies used by L1 English L2 French learners to produce round vowels. It has been suggested that learners have more difficulty in producing L2 phones that are "similar" to L1 phones than L2 phones that are completely "new" because learners use L1 categories to produce L2 phones (Flege, 1982; Kamiyama and Vaissiere, 2009). However, this claim is based solely on acoustic data. To this end, the present study records learners' articulatory strategies using Ultrasound during production of French round vowels /y, u, ø, o/ compared to English /u, o/. 1 L1 French speaker and 6 L2 French learners were recorded producing wordlists in French and English, using ultrasound, video recordings of lip protrusion, and audio recordings. Results show that learners do not, in fact, use L1 articulatory strategies to produce L2 phones. Additionally, articulatory data show that learners still have difficulty producing target-like tongue positions for new phones, despite having target-like acoustic productions, which may suggest that non-native vowels have an acoustic rather than an articulatory target.