Linguistic varieties

  • Martine ADDA-DECKER (Paris)
    French ‘liaison’ in casually spoken French, as investigated in a large corpus of casual French speech
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 113-128

    In this paper, the realisation of the French Liaison is investigated in a large corpus of casual speech. Considering that casual speech gives rise to a large range of pronunciation variants and that overall temporal reduction increases, one may hypothesize that French liaison tends to be less productive in this speaking style. We made use of automatic processing such as automatic speech alignments to evaluate when liaison is realized in the NCCFr corpus. Realized liaisons were examined and measured for the most frequent liaison consonants (/z/, /n/ and /t/) as a function of a liaison sites classified as mandatory, optional or forbidden. The relation between speech rate and liaison realization is also examined.


  • Maria Fernanda BACELAR DO NASCIMENTO (Lisbonne, Portugal)
    Linguistic resources and varieties in contemporary Portuguese
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 81-86

    This article gives a brief presentation of the Reference Corpus of Present day Portuguese (CRPC), that is in the process of being built at the University of Lisbon. It presents the reasons justifying its creation (among which the geographical scattering of the speakers of Portuguese), the principles that underlie the building of the corpus and the various ways in which it may be used.


  • Hélène BLONDEAU (Floride, Etats-Unis)
    No salvation outside THE norm ? The Montreal study of variations in hypothetical si-clauses
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 55-66

    Through the panel study of twelve Montrealers from 1971 to 1995, this article examines the variation between the conditional and the imperfect morphology in hypothetical si-clauses. The two variants, well in place in the spoken French implicit norms system, are in opposition when given values in the normative debate. The analysis indicates the influence of the distance and the event potentiality. Due to vacillations in usage frequency according to the year, the study cannot confirm the hypothesis of a change in favor of the conditional morphology. This case study documents the individual variation across the lifespan and its connection to community change.


  • Arlette BOTHOREL-WITZ (Strasbourg)
    Variation and varieties in Alsatian dialects
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 23-40

    The specific situation of the geolinguistic area lead to reconsider the concept of an alsatian dialect, which can be redefined on the basis of the representations and the attitudes it generates. It is suggested in this article to consider the dialectal variations firstly from a psychosociologic and secondly from a sociolinguistic point of view. Finally a short overview of the geolinguistic features that characterize of the present dialects will allow to show the complementarity of these different approaches.


  • Suzanne BURGER (Munich, Allemagne)
    RVG1 - A prototype for the collection of current spoken German
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 67-79

    This article describes ideas of the project "Collection of Currently Spoken German". This project is presently planned at the Institute of Phonetics at Munich University. The aim of the project is to collect aspects of currently spoken German by means of a static network of recording stations distributed all over the German speaking area. The RVG1 (Regional Variants of German) corpus serves as a prototype for regionally covered speech data. It can be seen as a first small database of regionally covered recordings of German representing the most common dialectal regions or at least all those regions which could be important for categorizing regional variants into broader classes. RVG1 contains read numbers, phonetically rich sentences and computer commands as well as spontaneous speech. Some features of this corpus will be introduced and discussed.


  • Sylvain DETEY (Tokyo, Japon)
    Learners of French and pronunciation norms in the FL : what input do we need to reach what results
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 81-96

    In the field of French language education, the developments of corpus linguistics have spurred a reassessment of the importance of pedagogical norms and linguistic variation in teaching curricula. In this article, we focus on the phonetic-phonological dimension of the teaching/learning process and, after a short glance at pronunciation models in French, we examine the impact of sociolinguistic descriptions of varieties of French on pronunciation education. Referring to the notions of 'errors' and 'accents' among non-native speakers, we point out the need for broad and systematic corpus-based studies, comparable with native databases. Finally, we introduce the InterPhonologie du français contemporain project and look at the notion of non-native norms, both from theoretical and applied perspectives.


  • Jacques DURAND (Toulouse)
    Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties and structures
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 25-37

    The PAC project (The Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties, structure) aims at giving a better picture of spoken English in its unity and its geographical, social and stylistic diversity. Based on Labovian methods, the project seeks to describe both rhotic and non rhotic accents of English, from traditional standards to more recent postcolonial varieties. This large corpus enables researchers to analyse and compare intervarietal features such as rhoticity as well as more specific phenomena such as vocalic length in Australian English or variable rhoticity in New Zealand English. Today LVTI, a collaborative project aiming at an interdisciplinary sociolinguistic survey of great urban centres such as Manchester and Toulouse is being set up following the PAC/PFC classical protocol.


  • Jean-Michel ELOY (Angers)
    Variation and varieties in the Oïl domain
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 7-22

    Whereas dialectologists and regional language militants favour the specificities of the dialects, describing 'in-situation' regional Oïl speaking, which raises interesting theoretical questions of actuality, remains an insufficiently explored domain in France. This paper shows some examples of literary texts of the Oïl regional varieties.Contrarily to the dominant French language tradition, it is demonstrated the 'French' itself (in the central Oïl area) presents diatopic variations: in contrario, in the other Oïl regions, we encounter not French but different varieties: wallon, picard, normand, gallo, poitevin-saintongeais, etc. There, the truly linguistic features cannot be dissociated from symbolic identity, and are a focus for normative constructions. The measure of their existence cannot be reduced to simple statistics (totally unreliable), but it is clear that these varieties have not (not yet ?) disappeared.Correctly apprehending these realities is important for both sociolinguistics and democracy.


  • Claire SAILLARD (Paris 7)
    The sociolinguistic situation in Taiwan
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 87-99

    The languages spoken in Taiwan belong partly to the Austronesian linguistic family, and partly to the Chinese languages. The article deals with the state of standardization of the written languages. Besides, the historical origin and the differential status of the Austronesian and Han ethnic groups in the Taiwanese society are described. Language vitality is linked to the social characteristics of the ethnic groups. Finally, the question is raised whether multilingualism can be officially accepted.


  • Leonardo Maria SAVOIA (Florence, Italie)
    Problems in phonological micro-variation in dialects of Northern Italy
    2008, Vol. XIII-2, pp. 103-119

    Northern Italian varieties are usually divided by traditional dialectology into closed subgroups according to a rigid areal model based on isoglosses. From this viewpoint, the gallo-italian subgroup is considered a well defined and compact set, separated not only from Southern Italian varieties but also from Northern dialects of Venetia and the Rheto-roman domain. The detailed analysis of fieldwork data the micro-variation approach needs, together with an appropriate phonological theory – in this case, Government Phonology – allows to describe, in an unitary framework, a lot of processes often considered heterogeneous and independent. This perspective reveals unexpected convergences between dialects whose similarities could be made opaque in a taxonomical and historical comparative approach.


  • Sandrine WACHS (Paris 10)
    The influence of age on the pronunciation of French in Ile de France
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 57-66

    Does the way a language is spoken vary with the age of the speakers of that language? In this paper we want to discuss different forms of articulatory relaxation in the Ile-de-France area in relation to the age of the speakers of those forms. The study shows that everybody relaxes his or her pronunciation in informal sttings. Only the reduction of "speach markers", such as 'écoute', 'je ne dis pas', seems to be specific to 18-45 year-old speakers.