Auditieve Woordherkenning in Het Frans Als Vreemde Taal

Abstract

This article deals with some fundamental aspects of understanding spoken language in general and spoken French by non-native speakers of French in particular. The problem is discussed within a theoretical framework based on Marslen-Wilson's cohort theory, Morton's Information Processing theory, and psychological skill theory. It is predicted i) that a word form is recognized the more readily as it resembles more its "canonic" (=citation) form and ii) that a word is recognized more rapidly by native than by non-native speakers. In French there are three phenomena that affect the canonic form. They all have to do with the specific structure of French, where syllable boundaries often do not co-incide with word boundaries, and where syllable structure generally has priority over word structure. These three phenomena are elision, liaison and enchaînement. In experiments on the word recognition by native and non-native speakers of French we found that: - Native speakers recognize words more rapidly than non-native speakers - Elision has an important effect on word recognition when it occurs at the beginning of a word, none at all at the end of the word, whereas the influence of Enchaînement and Liaison on word recognition seems to be less important for both native and non-native speakers.