Inter-gestural timing in French nasal vowels: a comparative study of (liege, tournai) northern French vs. (marseille, toulouse) southern French

Finished · Phonetics

Summary

The paper provides acoustic evidence that to regional dialects of French exhibit distinctive realization of nasal vowels in C_CV position. The Northern French Variety exhibit a high degree of nasality across the majority of the nasal vowel, demonstrating that these vowels are indeed underlyingly /Ṽ/. Conversely, Southern French nasal vowels had a smaller degree of nasality on the vowel itself followed by an intrusive nasal consonant that really was just part of the nasal vowel in their intepretation. The key evidence for this is that true /N/ consonants are distinct in their realizations from this intrusive nasal. Thus, they interpret the underlying identity of nasal vowels in SF as also /Ṽ/, instead of /VN/ as suggested in previous literature.

An important result outside of the underlying identities of these vowels is that there exists variation in the planned implementation of nasal vowels across these French dialects. That is, there is phonetically distinct planning in different communities. This is further evidence that speakers have intended plans of realizing certain segments.