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A few words on the history of experimental phonetics in Grenoble

Experimental phonetics became a scientific discipline that studied speech and language at the turn of the 20th century, starting with Abbé Rousselot's 1891 thesis on the phonetic modifications of the Cellefrouin dialect in the Charente region, using an experimental method. This was followed by the publication of the two-volume Principes de phonétique expérimentale in 1897 and 1901. This marked a turning point for phonetics, which was to broaden its fields of investigation beyond historical aspects and comparative grammar.

Grenoble played an active role in the advent of experimental phonetics. In 1904, the University obtained the creation of a post of lecturer in modern French philology, financed by the foreign students' patronage committee, to teach French to foreigners. Théodore Rosset, a pupil of Rousselot, was recruited. Upon his arrival, he set up an experimental phonetics laboratory, soon to be renamed the Institut de Phonétique de Grenoble. Founder-director Théodore Rosset quickly made a name for himself through his contributions to the teaching of French pronunciation, and his role in the development of laboratory phonetics, by proposing to bring together the practical teaching of language pronunciation and the scientific study of the spoken word. "It was an original idea to group together, for the first time in France and in a single institute, all the research and disciplines (descriptive phonetics, historical phonetics, instrumental phonetics, phonetic study of dialects, practical and corrective phonetics, etc.) relating to spoken language, and to show the close solidarity that unites all the hitherto scattered sections of the same science" (Gsell, 1956, quoted by Boë and Vilain, 2011).

The " Experimental phonetics of language acquisition "This course follows in the footsteps of Théodore Rosset's work in Grenoble. The course tackles the problem of learning to pronounce a second language (L2), and aims to introduce students to experimental studies that attempt to explain and understand the processes involved in learning linguistic systems. It also looks at methods and technological tools to help learners acquire the pronunciation of a second language, targeting the types of difficulties encountered by learners. Part of the course content draws on data from the laboratory, which provides new insights into the direction of phonetic studies, and the importance of the experimental method in studies of second-language pronunciation acquisition.

Course description

From targeted notions of general phonetics on second-language learning are presented in the first part of the course. The notion of "phonological deafness" is described in order to understand certain factors of the mother tongue and speech processing responsible for second-language "accent". Various examples of L1 phonological inventories are studied for the different consequences they generate in the learning of the same second language. The course also presents recurrent difficulties in the acquisition of L2 pronunciation, which can go as far as fossilization even in advanced learners. The causes of these difficulties are studied in close connection with speech perception-production mechanisms. In this context, recent studies that seek to involve technological tools capable of overcoming the effects of phonological screening during L2 learning are presented.

The course invites students to take the full measure of what pronunciation difficulties in an L2 engender in the practice of this language, on the experimental means that can be used to study the processes of acquisition of the sound forms of an L2.

In the experimental part of the courseIn this course, students are given the opportunity to tackle a problem in the same way as a phonetician, by taking a closer look at learners' difficulties in perceiving and producing L2 sounds. Working in pairs, they carry out a project based on a problem that often stems from their own experience (building a corpus, finding a native speaker of the L2 and recording him/her in the GIPSA-lab laboratory's deaf room, setting up a perceptual test interface, finding one or more learners and having them take the test, analyzing the results and discussing them within the framework of the acquisition/learning theories seen in class). Here are a few examples of the projects the students have chosen :

• French learners' difficulty in perceiving the difference between the vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in English (to distinguish between the words hit and heat, ship and sheep, for example).
• Why can't English or Russian or Italian-speaking learners clearly perceive the difference between the two sounds /u/ and /y/ in French, and therefore the difference between the sentences Tout va bien and Tu vas bien?
• Why do Chinese learners find it hard to hear the difference between the words gift and cake?
• Why do Japanese learners have so much trouble distinguishing between bed and rice?

Answering these questions also provides a broader understanding of how human language works (at the phonological level, for example).

The course has been part of our model for 5 years now. It is a course offered in Complementary Training Offer L2 students. It is also open to foreign students who arrive regularly each year as part of international exchange programs (ERASMUS, etc.). Foreign students make a particularly important contributionOn the one hand, they share their experience as FLE learners and the difficulties they have encountered or still encounter in pronouncing French, and on the other, their mother tongues (English, Italian, Spanish) are very often the target languages of our French-speaking students.

References :

Boë L.-J. & Vilain, C.-E. (2011) A century of experimental phonetics. Foundation and elements of development. ENS Editions.
Rousselot (1897). Principes de phonétique expérimentale, tome I, Paris-Leipzig, Welter.
Rousselot (1901). Principes de phonétique expérimentale, tome II, Paris-Leipzig, Welter.