Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T07:20:30.671Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

More on (distinctive!) vowel length in historical French*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

RANDALL GESS*
Affiliation:
Carleton University
*
Address for correspondence: Randall Gess, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 215 Paterson Hall, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada e-mail: randall_gess@carleton.ca

Abstract

While rejecting a claim for the disappearance of distinctive vowel length in historical French as ‘counterfactual’ (Picard, 2004: 3), Picard's own arguments in support of the existence of vowel length do not rise to the level of fact. Picard fails to differentiate between derived versus underlying (hence distinctive) features. Further, his assumptions regarding vowel length from the Middle French period on are ill founded. Regarding the truly minor vocalic contrasts that do exist in Canadian French mid and low vowels, Picard makes several unmotivated assumptions and unsupported assertions that preclude consideration of other, plausible scenarios for their existence. Minor vocalic contrasts such as these, with little to no functional load, can be modeled in phonological grammars without an unnecessary proliferation of phonological categories.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

For even more on this issue the reader is referred to Gess (2006) and Morin (2006), who have strongly divergent views on the historicity of vowel length in French and, in particular, its phonological status (distinctiveness, contrastiveness, relevance and/or salience, as well as functional load). Despite the publication date, Gess (2006) was written subsequently to the current article, which was submitted to this journal in February, 2005.

References

REFERENCES

Biedermann-Pasques, L. (1992). Les grands courants orthographiques au XVIIe siècle et la formation de l'orthographe moderne. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P. (1998). Functional Phonology. Formalizing in interactions between articulatory and perceptual drives. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Citton, Y. and Wyss, A. (1989). Les doctrines orthographiques du XVIe siècle en France. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. (1946). Le français en 1700 d'après le témoignage de Gile Vaudelin. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Dumas, D. (1974). Durée vocalique et diphtongaison en français québécois. In: Morin, Y.-C., Picard, M., Pupier, P., and Santerre, L. (eds.), Le français de la région de Montréal. Montréal: Les Presses de l'Université du Québec, pp. 1355.Google Scholar
Dumas, D. (1981). Structure de la diphtongaison québécoise. Revue canadienne de linguistique, 26: 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupuis, S. (1836). Traité de prononciation ou nouvelle prosodie française. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Estienne, R. (1549). Dictionaire francoislatin, avtrement dict les mots francois, auec les manieres dvser diceulx, tournez en latin. Paris: R. Estienne. Reprinted 1972. Geneva: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Estienne, R. (1557). Traicte de la grammaire francoise. Paris: R. Estienne. Reprinted 1972. Geneva: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Faber, A., Di Paolo, M. and Best, C. (2007). Perceiving the unperceivable: The acquisition of near-merged forms. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Flemming, E. (2001). Scalar and categorical phenomena in a unified model of phonetics and phonology. Phonology, 18: 744.Google Scholar
Gess, R. (2001). Distinctive vowel length in Old French: evidence and implications. In: Brinton, L. J. (ed.), Historical Linguistics 1999. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 145156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gess, R. (2006). The myth of phonologically distinctive vowel length in Renaissance French. In: Gess, R. S. and Arteaga, D. (eds.), Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 5376.Google Scholar
Keating, P. A. (1984). Universal phonetics and the organization of grammars. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 59: 3549.Google Scholar
Kirchner, R. (2001). An Effort Based Approach to Lenition. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lanoue, O. de (1596). Dictionnaire des rimes françoises. Geneva: Les héritiers d'Eustache Vignon.Google Scholar
Lartigaut, A. (1669). Les progrès de la véritable ortografe ou l'ortografe francêze fondée sur ses principes. Paris: Laurant Ravenau.Google Scholar
Martinet, A. (1945). La prononciation du français contemporain. Paris: Droz.Google Scholar
Martinet, A. (1959). L'évolution contemporaine du système phonologique contemporain. Free University Quarterly, 7: 1–16. Amsterdam: Free University [also in Le français sans fard (Paris: PUF, 1969), pp. 168–190].Google Scholar
Matthieu, A., sieur des Moystardières. (1559–60). Devis de la langue française, suivi du Second devis et principal propos de la langue française. Paris: Breton.Google Scholar
Maupas, C. (1618). Grammaire et syntaxe françoise contenant reigles bien exactes & certaines de la prononciation, orthographe, construction & usage de nostre langue, en faveur des estrangers qui en sont desireux. Orleans: O. Boynard et I. Nyon. Reprinted 1973. Geneva: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Morin, Y. C. (2000). La prononciation et la prosodie du français du XVIe siècle selon le témoignage de Jean-Antoine de Baïf. Langue Française, 126: 928.Google Scholar
Morin, Y. C. (2006). On the phonetics of rhymes in Classical and Pre-Classical French. In: Gess, R. S. and Arteaga, D. (eds.), Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 131162.Google Scholar
Nicot, I. (1606). Thresor de la langue françoyse, tant ancienne que moderne. Paris: Denys Duval. Reprinted 1960. Paris: Picard.Google Scholar
Oudin, A. (1640). Grammaire françoise (2nd ed.). Paris: A. de Sommaville. Reprinted 1972. Geneva: Slatkine.Google Scholar
Picard, M. (2004). /s/-deletion in Old French and the aftermath of compensatory lengthening. Journal of French Language Studies, 14: 17.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, J. B. (2002). Word-specific phonetics. In: Gussenhoven, C. and Warner, N. (eds.), Laboratory Phonology 7. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 101139.Google Scholar
Ricard, A. (1887). Système de la quantité syllabique et de l'articulation des sons graves et des aigus. Prague: Gustave Neugebauer.Google Scholar
Steriade, D. (2000). Paradigm uniformity and the phonetics-phonology boundary. In: Broe, M. B. and Pierrehumbert, J. B. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 313334.Google Scholar
Vaudelin, G. (1713). Nouvelle manière d'écrire comme on parle en France. Paris.Google Scholar
Walker, D. C. (2001). French Sound Structure. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.Google Scholar
Walter, H. (1976). La dynamique des phonèmes dans le lexique français contemporain. Paris: France Expansion.Google Scholar