Acquiring the high vowel contrast in Quebec French: How assibilation helps
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In Quebec French (QF), /t/ and /d/ are assibilated to [ts] and [dz] before /i/ and /y/, but not before /u/. Since the /y/-/u/ contrast is known to be difficult for English speakers learning French as a second language (L2), we examine whether L2 learners of French who have acquired the assibilation rule have any advantage in producing and perceiving the French /i/-/y/-/u/ contrast over L2 learners who produce less or no assibilation in their L2 French. Results demonstrate that L2 learners who are strong assibilators are better at producing vowels similarly to native QF speakers than weak assibilators, but in perception, L2 learners who produce strong assibilation had no statistically significant advantage over L2 learners who are weak assibilators in being able to discriminate or identify the French high vowels. We conclude that production of assibilation in L2 Quebec French helps learners in production, though not perception, further providing insight into the relationship between L2 perception and production.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".