Publications
Publication details [#56189]
Gess, Randall, Chantal Lyche and Trudel Meisenburg, eds. 2012. Phonological Variation in French. Illustrations from three continents. (Studies in Language Variation 11). John Benjamins. vii+397 pp.
Publication type
Book – edited volume
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Annotation
This volume presents a selection of French varieties representing the great diversity of this language along geographical, social, and stylistic dimensions. Twelve illustrations from regions as far removed as Western Canada and Central Africa represent widely divergent social contexts of language use. Each paper is based on original surveys conducted within the framework of the Phonology of Contemporary French project, described in the Introduction. These surveys constitute an invaluable source of new data for researchers, as many of the varieties included are otherwise undocumented in any systematic way. The papers follow a similar format: presentation of the survey(s) and the sociolinguistic dimensions of the variety studied; description of the phonological inventory of the system(s), principal allophonic realizations, phonotactic constraints, behavior of schwa, behavior of liaison consonants, and other notable characteristics. The book opens with an informative introduction and closes with a chapter providing a synthesis of the major findings by continent.