Nasality, length and diphthongization in Quebec French: An MRI study

• Applicant: Dr. Josiane Riverin-Coutlée, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 520195671

The project consists in a physiological study of a potential case of cue trading between nasality and diphthongization occurring in Quebec French (QF). Cue trading is a mechanism where the relative weight of redundant cues to a phonological contrast is redistributed, eventually causing the sounds of a language to change. The project focuses on the potential enhancement of diphthongization from the attrition of vowel nasalization. In QF nasal vowels, diphthongization is increasingly common while the weakening of nasalization may come about because of a tendency to late velum opening, neither of which are phenomena found in standard Hexagonal French. However, it is so far unclear whether they covary, and whether diphthongization is increasingly important in QF for distinguishing nasal-oral minimal pairs like ‘chance/chasse’ (‘luck/hunt’). One of the reasons why this issue remains unsolved is because it involves nasal vowels, which speakers produce by lowering their velum (or soft palate). Indeed, it is difficult to obtain reliable measures of velum movement from the acoustic signal, while most physiological techniques infer velum movements indirectly and are limited to very small numbers of speakers. To overcome these difficulties, the project will make use of real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to obtain direct accurate measures of how the velum, tongue and lips are synchronized in an unprecedentedly large number of QF speakers (30). Advanced methods of statistical analysis applied to this cutting-edge dataset will reveal: 1) the articulatory relationship between oral and nasal vowels of QF; 2) the extent of nasality attrition in short and long nasal vowels; 3) how closely oral and nasal speech gestures covary in diphthongized nasal vowels. Special attention will be paid to non-random patterns of variation in the data that could support (or refute) the thesis of an ongoing cue trade-off: speakers leading the change are expected to show more diphthongization, weaker nasality and in-phase onset of nasality and diphthongization. The project is important because it examines a possible trade-off between a cross-linguistically rare combination of cues, which opens up new horizons for modelling sound change, and also provides long needed empirical data on QF. The project is a natural extension of the applicant’s expertise in QF phonetics and phonology, as well as language variation and change, combined with that of the host institute in speech physiology and its analysis using real-time MRI.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants