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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2005

Asymmetry in vowel perception in L1: evidence from articulatory synthesis of an [i]-[e] continuum

Résumé

For the past 25 years, a debate on whether vowel discrimination is affected by stimulus presentation order has been raised and the role of peripheral vowels in our perception has been under careful examination.
In earlier studies, the method used to synthesize a vowel continuum has been by fragmenting, in equidistant points, the F1/F2 Euclidean distance between two prototypes (best exemplars of two different vowel categories). Nonetheless, the resulting sounds were rather unrealistic, inasmuch as some of them were assigned formant-value combinations that cannot be produced by a human vocal tract. Furthermore, the assignment of fixed F3 and F4 values generated a false spectral peak (around 3100 Hz and thus close to that of [i]) which induced the listeners to identify more [i]'s than they should have. Evidence from a recent study on vowel prototypes suggests that [i] has a very narrow perception zone, despite its acoustic stability and peripherality and notwithstanding the absence of a mid-close [e] in the system.
Bearing these methodological inconsistencies in mind, we opted to prepare our stimuli using articulatory synthesis. Therefore, we have synthesized a prototypic French [i] (stimulus no. 1, the most extreme) and then modified its parameters (jaw height and tongue position), gradually and in 9 steps, towards a prototypic French [e] (stimulus no. 10, the least extreme). We subsequently submitted the 10-vowel continuum to 34 native French listeners by conducting:
a) an identification test in which listeners were requested to identify as [i] or [e] seven repetitions of each stimulus, presented in random order;
b) a discrimination test in which listeners were presented with 34 stimulus combinations [18 one-step pairs (9 stimulus combinations, 2 orders) and 16 two-step pairs (8 stimulus combinations, 2 orders)] and were asked whether the two vowels were the same or different. The ISI (Inter-Stimulus Interval) was fixed at 250 ms and every pair was presented five times.
Results from the identification test reveal a clear quantal perception of the two categories.
The discrimination results demonstrate that: a) discrimination is more difficult when a more extreme (on the F2' dimension) stimulus is presented second and b) discrimination is significantly easier in the 2-step condition, in both orders of presentation.

Domaines

Linguistique
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Dates et versions

halshs-00133176 , version 1 (23-02-2007)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-00133176 , version 1

Citer

Charalampos Karypidis, Gilles Guglielmi, Angelica Costagliola. Asymmetry in vowel perception in L1: evidence from articulatory synthesis of an [i]-[e] continuum. Nov 2005, pp.695-707. ⟨halshs-00133176⟩
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