Against the Law of Three Consonants in French: Evidence from Judgment Data

Grammont's Law of Three Consonants (LTC) states that French schwa is obligatorily pronounced in any CC_C sequence to avoid three-consonant clusters. Although schwa presence has been shown to be sensitive not only to cluster size but also to the nature of consonants in post-lexical phonology, the LTC is still considered as accurate to describe schwa-zero alternations in lexical phonology. The paper uses judgment data from French speakers in France and Switzerland to compare the behavior of schwa in derived words (lexical phonology) and inflected words (post-lexical phonology). The results show that schwa-zero alternations are conditioned not only by cluster size but also by cluster type in lexical phonology. Moreover, the same phonotactic asymmetries among consonant clusters are found in lexical and post-lexical phonologies. The data therefore support a weaker version of the lexical-phonology hypothesis than what is usually assumed for French. Lexical and post-lexical phonologies do not require different phonotactic constraints but only different weights for the same constraints

A contrast-based account of word-final tensing

Some languages allow tense and lax vowels to contrast before word-final consonants but not word-finally, where only tense vowels are permitted. What is the motivation for this pattern? This paper proposes that the loss of vowel-duration contrasts in word-final positions is a phonetic precursor to word-final tensing. In languages where tense and lax vowels differ both spectrally and temporally, neutralization of duration contrasts in word-final positions results in tense-lax pairs differing only spectrally. If this spectral difference is not sufficient to support a phonemic contrast, the tense-lax contrast is neutralized altogether. The preference for tense vowels in case of neutralization can be explained as a preference for more distinct vowel contrasts in the F1xF2 space. Evidence for this account comes from an acoustic study of Swiss French showing that, although tense-lax contrasts are maintained both before word-final consonants and word-finally in this variety, they are signaled by temporal cues only before word-final consonants. While Dispersion-Theoretic analyses of vowel inventories tend to focus on F1 and F2, the present analysis suggests that distinctiveness along both spectral and temporal dimensions is relevant to understand the typology of phonological patterns

Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy in Haitian as morphological optimization

Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) may be phonologically optimizing: allomorph selection complies with the language phonotactics. However this is not always the case. A counterexample often discussed in the literature is Haitian determiner a/la. This paper further investigates Haitian by focusing on a PCSA pattern in Northern Haitian that has not yet been discussed in the theoretical literature: third person singular pronoun i/li. The paper argues that this pattern can be analyzed as morphologically optimizing: allomorph selection in this case can be understood as a way to facilitate morpheme identification in context. The pattern presents a further interesting property: allomorph selection interacts with a phonologically optimizing process (pronoun reduction from i to y [j] and from li to l). This interaction can be straightforwardly modeled in an analysis assuming parallel morphological and phonological optimizations, but not in a serial model where the morphology precedes the phonology and has no access to the output of phonological optimization

Constraint summation in phonological theory

Classical phonological constraints apply to individual candidates. Yet, some authors have proposed constraints that instead apply to sets of candidates, such as distinctiveness constraints (Flemming 2002) and Optimal Paradigm faithfulness constraints (McCarthy 2005). As a consequence, the classical constraints need to be \u27\u27lifted\u27\u27 to sets by summing across the set. Is this assumption of constraint summation typologically innocuous? Or do the classical constraints make different typological predictions when they are summed? Extending Prince (2015), we characterize those models of constraint interaction for which constraint summation is typologically innocuous. As a corollary, typological innocuousness is established for OT and HG

Qualité et évolution des représentations spatiales lors d’une première lecture de L’Occupation des sols

Cet article étudie la qualité et l’évolution des représentations spatiales lors d’une première lecture de L’Occupation des sols, une nouvelle de Jean Echenoz qui accorde une place remarquable à l’espace. Une expérience a été conduite auprès de 40 participants. La petite taille des représentations spatiales remémorées (environ 7 référents spatiaux en moyenne) témoigne de l’importance que joue la mémoire de travail dans leur constitution. Les représentations convergent assez vite vers quelques éléments saillants, par leur fréquence et leur pertinence dans le texte. Bien que ces résultats puissent sembler évidents a posteriori, ils mettent néanmoins en lumière à quel point les représentations spatiales élaborées lors d’une première lecture sont pauvres et pertinentes à la fois.This paper studies the quality and evolution of spatial representations formed by readers reading L’Occupation des sols for the first time. L’Occupation des sols is a short story written by Jean Echenoz in which space is given a prominent role. An experiment was run with 40 participants. The spatial representations formed by readers are small (around 7 spatial referents on average). This suggests that working memory plays an important role in filtering them. The representations converge rapidly to a few elements made salient in the story by their frequency or narrative relevance. These results may seem unsurprising a posteriori. However, they show how poor and yet pertinent spatial representations formed by readers reading a story for the first time are.

La référence aux personnages et aux lieux dans L’Occupation des sols

Cet article porte sur la référence aux personnages et aux lieux dans L’Occupation des sols. Les deux types de référents sont pris en compte dans la première partie qui est consacrée aux deux premiers paragraphes du récit où sont introduits les principaux protagonistes et les lieux où ils évoluent. Les deuxième et troisième parties sont dévolues respectivement aux personnages et aux zones de l’espace urbain avec les constructions qui les occupent. Les analyses s’attachent à suivre la façon très subtile dont Jean Echenoz déplace la référence au fil du texte. Quoique ontologiquement disjoints, les personnes et les lieux se rejoignent symboliquement au travers du personnage de la mère qui est à la fois présente en tant que personne et qu’effigie, et de l’immeuble en construction qui la recouvre progressivement. Le suivi de ces évolutions par les lecteurs implique des ajustements référentiels qui sont décortiqués au fil du texte.This paper concerns the reference to characters and places in “L’Occupation des sols”. These two types of referent are taken into account in the first part of the article which is devoted to the first two paragraphs of the text wherein are introduced the major characters and the places where they live. The second and third parts of the paper respectively deal with characters and areas of urban space with the buildings occupying them. We examine the subtle way in which Jean Echenoz moves the reference throughout the text. Although ontologically disjoint, characters and places come together symbolically through the character of the mother who is both present as a person and as a painting representation, and through the building under construction that gradually recovers her. Monitoring these developments by readers involves referential adjustments which are tracked over the text

French loanwords in Vietnamese: the role of input language phonotactics and contrast in loanword adaptation

This study examines the adaptation of French vowels in Vietnamese focusing on adaptation patterns that seem to defy a straightforward analysis based on native phonotactic restrictions or comparison of phonetic input-output similarity. A proper analysis requires reference to knowledge of the input language phonology. In the first case study, we observe that Vietnamese adapters extend the French phonotactic tendencies, i.e., Loi de Position, to loan adaptation productively. Such "intrusion" of L2 phonology knowledge may arise when phonetics underdetermines the adaptation and the adapters look to their knowledge of L2 phonology to arrive at adaptation. It is also notable that the L2 knowledge employed in adaptation is not native-like as the adaptation is not always isomorphic to the French input. In the second case study, the contrast of L2 phonology is neutralized due to an L1 phonological restriction but the Vietnamese adaptation systematically retains the contrast in the quality and length difference in the preceding vowel. There is plausible phonetic motivation for this adaptation pattern, but phonetically faithful mapping underdetermines the attested adaptation pattern, and reference to knowledge of L2 phonological contrasts is necessary. These findings illustrate the complexity of the loanword adaptation process, where a variety of different factors including L1 phonological restrictions, phonetic similarity, and L2 phonological knowledge, interact to affect adaptation

Perceptual sources for closed-syllable vowel laxing and derived environment effects

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-241).This dissertation claims that allowing perceptual factors to play a role in phonology helps make some progress on the understanding of two challenging phenomena: closed-syllable vowel laxing (CSVL), i.e. the tendency for vowels to be lowered and centralized before word-final and preobstruent consonants, and phonologically-derived environment effects (PDEEs), i.e. patterns where a phonological process is blocked unless accompanied by another phonological process. CSVL is challenging because the mechanism that relates vowel quality and the postvocalic context is not obvious. In particular, CSVL cannot be analyzed as a coarticulatory effect driven by vowel shortening. PDEEs are challenging because they imply that a smaller input-output change may be worse than a strictly larger one, in violation of a basic principle of faithfulness. Part I proposes that CSVL is a strategy to enhance contrasts among postvocalic consonants in contexts where these consonants lack good release cues and are therefore perceptually weak. In particular, laxing is argued to enhance contrasts of place of articulation (e.g. contrasts involving [p], [t], [k]). This hypothesis is supported by the results of a perception experiment showing that, in French, [p], [t], and [k] are generally more distinct after lax mid vowels than after tense mid vowels. An analysis of CSVL is proposed using constraints on contrasts. Part II proposes that PDEEs follow from the hypothesis that the input-output distance is perceived logarithmically: this predicts that a feature change may be less salient perceptually and therefore represent a smaller violation of faithfulness if accompanied by another feature change. This theory has two desirable consequences: it reconciles the analysis of PDEEs with the idea of a minimal input-output modification bias and it derives a number of perceptual constraints on the features that can interact in PDEEs, therefore providing a restrictive account of the typology.by Benjamin Storme.Ph. D

The effect of schwa duration on pre-schwa mid-vowel lowering in French

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