This article investigates the treatment of oronasal vowel /ↄ̃/ of the prenominal adjective bon (/bↄ̃/) in liaison, as produced by 19 speakers of Northern Metropolitan French. The oronasal vowel of this word has traditionally been identified as a denasalized vowel in liaison, which, when paired with the liaison consonant [n], is typically understood to be produced identically to the feminine form of the adjective bonne (/bↄn/). To verify this supposition, the adjective pair bon/bonne is produced in various contexts and word sequences by each speaker in a series of reading tasks. Six acoustic measures (i.e., A1−P0, A3−P0, center of gravity, F1 bandwidth, F2 and vowel duration) are taken for each token and the resulting data are analysed in a series of regression models. A brief acoustic description is given for the vowel /ↄ̃/ both in and out of liaison, and comparison is made between bon in liaison and the feminine bonne in prevocalic position (e.g., bon ami vs. bonne amie). Analyses indicate that 15 of the 19 speakers seem to produce bon in liaison distinctly from non-liaison bon, but not distinctly from pre-vocalic bonne, which may support suppletive analyses of adjectives in liaison.

Variation and change in the future temporal reference (FTR) sector in French has been the subject of numerous studies, from a variety of perspectives. Most studies consider the patterns of variation and evidence for change by looking at the verbal system as a whole. However, there are indications that some verbs differ significantly in their preference for one or other variant. Avoir and être are two such verbs. This study first examines the overall distribution of the inflected and periphrastic future with these two verbs in the ESLO corpus of spoken French, and considers the evidence for change. A multivariate analysis of the linguistic factors affecting variant selection in FTR with these two verbs reveals no exceptional effects; we thus explore other possible explanations for the exceptional distribution of FTR variants with these two verbs.

In this article, we present the results of an analysis of variation, whose main objectives are to ascertain the ethnocultural identities speakers declare and to measure the impact of internal, external and identity factors on the use of the connectors of consequence (ça) fait que vs donc vs alors vs so. Our research emphasizes that while there is no consensus as to the terminology chosen to express these identities, it is important to consider ethnocultural identities as a complementary factor conditioning linguistic variation. It also demonstrates that for communities whose linguistic practices and norms straddle those of minority- and majority-French language communities, the minority/majority dichotomy needs to be nuanced, according to the social and ethnocultural identity dynamics that may characterize specific communities.

In a language, suffix cohesion refers to the fact that suffixed words behave phonologically as simple or complex units depending on the suffix they are built with. This article uncovers a previously undescribed pattern of suffix cohesion in French, where words suffixed with vowel- and glide-initial suffixes behave phonologically like simple units (e.g. fêtiez [fet-je] ‘you partied’) and words built with other consonant-initial suffixes behave phonologically like complex units (e.g. fêterez [fɛt-ʁe] ‘you will party’). The evidence comes from a reassessment of well-known data on [ə]–[ɛ] stem alternations and from an acoustic study of [e]–[ɛ] and [o]–[ɔ] alternations in suffixed words as pronounced by 10 speakers living in the Paris area. The suffix’s phonological shape is found to provide the best account of the data among a set of factors that have been argued to be relevant to suffix cohesion in other languages (in particular resyllabification). The French pattern has important theoretical implications for theories of suffix cohesion as it is not prosodically conditioned. An alternative analysis in terms of paradigm uniformity is proposed, where suffixed words are treated as complex units phonologically if the suffix’s phonological shape facilitates the perceptual recognition of the base corresponding to the suffixed word’s stem.