/R/ Lenition in Quebec French: Evidence from the Distribution of 9 Allophones in Large Corpora

Lancien, M., Hutin, M., Stuart-Smith, J. , Adda-Decker, M. and Vasilescu, I. (2023) /R/ Lenition in Quebec French: Evidence from the Distribution of 9 Allophones in Large Corpora. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Prague, Czech Republic, 7-11 Aug 2023. ISBN 9788090811423

Abstract

Lenition is a process whereby a segment shifts to a "weaker" variant (i.e., closer to deletion in the history of languages). Lenition is also a positional phenomenon, typically affecting intervocalic or coda consonants before post-coda or post-pausal onsets. While the lenition of stops is well studied in Romance languages, investigations about other segments are rare. We propose to fill this gap by focusing on /R/ in Québec French (QF), a variety documented to exhibit up to 9 allophones. We examine 50K+ read words from the PFCQuébec Corpus [1] that we manually annotated (for voicing, manner and place of articulation – based on perception and spectrograms). The analysis of the distribution of /R/ in different syllabic positions shows that lenited (approximantized, vocalized and non-realized) variants indeed appear in leniting positions (coda and intervocalic), thus showing that /R/ realizations in QF are not in free variation but indeed an instance of lenition.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Additional Information: This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Belgian Scientific Research Fonds (CR 40011029 (PPaDisM)), the French National Research Agency (ANR CLD20-25 and ANR-21-CE38-0019 (DIPVAR)) and the SPADE consortium.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Stuart-Smith, Professor Jane and Lancien, Dr Melanie
• Authors: Lancien, M., Hutin, M., Stuart-Smith, J., Adda-Decker, M., and Vasilescu, I.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics; College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies
• ISBN: 9788090811423
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 GUARANT International spol. s r. o.
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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