This study extended Gottfried’s [J. Phonetics 12, 91–114 (1984)] investigation of the effects of learning French on AE listeners categorial discrimination of the contrasts involving Parisian French vowels /y/, /o//, /u/, and /i/. Vowels were presented in /rabVp/ and /radVt/ bisyllables embedded in carrier phrases by three different speakers in an AXB discrimination task. Two groups were tested: proficient L2-French-speaking AE listeners (Exp) and non-French-speaking AE listeners (Inexp). Overall, the Exp group performed better than the Inexp group on /u-o//, /y-i/, and /y-o// distinctions (mean errors: Exp=5%, Inexp=24%). However, for /u-y/, the groups did not differ (Exp=30% vs Inexp=24% errors). The findings may be explained by perceptual assimilation patterns, which are determined, in part, by consonantal context. The Inexp group confused /y/ with /i/ in bilabial context, but /y/ with /u/ in alveolar context, whereas the Exp group confused /y/ with /u/, in both contexts. For all contrasts, the Inexp group performed better in bilabial than in alveolar context (16% vs 32% errors), whereas no context effect was revealed for the Exp group. The results suggest that learning a foreign language includes learning its coarticulatory rules.
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Levy et al. (2002) studied this question.