The palatal nasal is one of French’s most variable consonants with attested variants including [ɲ] alongside [nj] and, less frequently, [n] and [ŋ]. Variation is conditioned by both linguistic (position in the word, lexical item, flanking vowels) and speaker variables (in particular, variety). Except for insights provided by the studies reviewed in Recasens (2013), little is known of the articulatory properties of French /ɲ/ including the degree of inter-varietal and -speaker variation or the proportion of coronal and velar depalatalized realizations. We present here an electropalatographic (EPG) study of two European (EF) and two Quebec French (QF) speakers’ /ɲ/ production in both word-medial and -final positions in isolated and contextualized words. Quantitative indices and qualitative investigation of the linguopalatal contact profiles reveal that the EF speakers produced a relatively anterior /ɲ/, differing minimally from /n/ followed by /j/. Whereas one of their QF peers produced uniquely backed velar realizations of /ɲ/, the other speaker had fronted alveolopalatal variants word-medially versus backed velar realizations word-finally, with the latter differing minimally from the /ŋ/ of jogging. These findings are consistent with pathways to depalatalization observed in other Romance varieties and call into question the phonemic status of the palatal nasal in French.

This article examines the semantic value of the infinitive in the ingressive constructions se mettre à (SMA) and commencer à (COMA) using a distinctive collexeme analysis. We find that the collexemes significant for the construction SMA are fairly homogeneous across the different corpora and can be grouped into the general category of expressive collexemes. The collexemes significant for COMA are more heterogeneous and belong to the category of cognitive collexemes and to semantic fields of sensory and creative acts. The results are compatible with the hypothesis put forward by Verroens and De Cuypere (2023) stating that the overall meaning of the SMA construction is intrinsically punctual. The punctual value of SMA is not only compatible with expressive collexemes, but, moreover, emphasizes their unforeseen and unintentional meaning. Conversely, the incremental value of COMA is consistent with the gradual onset of cognitive and sensory collexemes.

This article investigates the evolution of bare nouns, used without a determiner, through the history of the French language. The loss of bare nouns is charted through calibrated corpora of non-fictional prose texts from the same genres and region, ranging from the 12th to the 19th century. The change is first completed with nouns in subject function, significantly advances with direct objects, and progresses with obliques. The extensive quantitative documentation demonstrates that the change is impacted by the syntactic function of the noun, along the Accessibility Hierarchy. The speculation is examined that the more accessible functions encourage expression of (definite) determiners, thus explaining the pattern of change.

Cet article questionne la nature des troubles phonologiques à travers le prisme de la notion de complexité phonologique chez des locuteurs francophones atteints d’aphasie. Si de nombreux travaux ont été consacrés aux erreurs phonétiques portant sur la réalisation des phonèmes, plus rares sont les études qui prennent en compte la dimension phonologique, i.e. l’environnement contextuel. Toutefois certains auteurs montrent que la structure syllabique du mot, ou encore la position des segments au sein des syllabes influencent les réalisations des locuteurs atteints d’une aphasie (Wilshire & Nespoulous, 2003; Buchwald et Miozzo, 2012; Buchwald, 2017). Ces facteurs renvoient à la notion de complexité phonologique.

Cette étude présente une analyse des erreurs phonologiques dans l’aphasie à partir d’un corpus de données empiriques récoltées auprès de huit locuteurs. Plusieurs facteurs de la complexité phonologique sont ici analysés afin de comprendre s’ils jouent un rôle dans la réalisation des erreurs. L’hypothèse est que la présence de séquences consonantiques, la position de ces séquences dans les items (initiale vs médiane), la nature de ces séquences (hétérosyllabique, tautosyllabique) ainsi que la longueur des items (bi vs trisyllabique) influencent la production des erreurs. À travers cette recherche, nous espérons accroître les connaissances sur la nature des déficits phonologiques.

This study offers a diachronic look (1840-today) into the direct partial interrogation system in Quebec French. The main goals are to provide empirical evidence of the rise of the in situ variant within the Quebec French system, and to understand how the system evolved over centuries, independently from Hexagonal French. The data (based on more than 1600 tokens) show that the emergence of the in situ variant seems to depend on the wh word itself, but its usage seems to be more important in Montreal. There are a few examples of in situ found before the 1970s, but this variant was never publicly condemned nor associated to “bad usage”. This article, inspired by a historical sociolinguistics approach, provides much needed original data from five different corpora, both (written) historical and (oral) contemporary, and shows that the partial interrogative system in Quebec is not stable over time. The Montreal data suggests a system evolving differently in this city than in other regions of the province, and the data from each wh word show that interrogatives with comment still only marginally allow the in situ variant.

Cette étude offre un portrait diachronique (1840 à aujourd’hui) global de la variation à l’intérieur du système d’interrogation partielle directe en français québécois. L’objectif principal est de contribuer de façon empirique à la compréhension du développement de la variante in situ en français du Québec, et d’en arriver à montrer l’évolution, indépendante de celle ayant lieu en France, sur plus d’un siècle. Nos données (plus de 1600 occurrences) montrent que l’émergence de la variante in situ dépend du mot wh utilisé, et qu’elle semble plus avancée à Montréal qu’ailleurs. Nous avons trouvé quelques traces de la variante in situ avant 1970 dans les documents métalinguistiques, et montrons que cette variante n’a jamais été condamnée. Le présent article s’inscrit dans une approche de sociolinguistique historique et fournit des données originales, tirées de corpus historique (écrit) et contemporains (oraux). Ce portrait quantitatif montre à quel point le système d’interrogation directe partielle n’est pas stable dans le temps, et suggère une évolution dans la communauté montréalaise qui se distingue des autres communautés étudiées. Le mot interrogatif comment résiste encore à la variante in situ, mais les taux globaux d’utilisation nous permettent de considérer la variante in situ comme faisant partie intégrante de l’interrogation en français québécois oral.

Although not studied by the generative approach (Shlonsky 2017), the embedded Wh- in situ clause nevertheless belongs to the French language spoken in a large amount of areas, and, we believe, to “français tout court” (Blanche-Benveniste & Jeanjean 1987): until now, it has mainly been studied in Quebec (Lefebvre & Maisonneuve 1982; Blondeau & Ledegen 2021) and in Reunion Island (Ledegen 2007a, 2007b, 2007c, 2016; Ledegen & Martin 2020), but it has recently been massively attested in the Multicultural Paris French project in the suburbs of Paris (Gardner-Chloros & Secova 2018) and Strasbourg (Marchessou 2018). These new data could be read as a language contact, as a recent linguistic change, or as a long-established “popular” structure (Guiraud 1966), different analytical hypotheses that will be detailed in this study. These recent data also argue in favour of the methodology of ecological corpora, obtained within the framework of a strong acquaintanceship and located at the pole of communicative proximity (Koch & Oesterreicher 2001). The examination of various existing corpora will reveal the structural functioning of the structure and contrast the corpora following the modes of interaction, the oral or written medium, as well as on the chronological axis.

Long-term contact with English has led to the presence in Guernésiais of a considerable number of lone English-origin lexical items (Jones, 2015). Although the presence of such items was being noted as far back as the nineteenth century, this is the first study to analyse and document them systematically. Using extensive original data, it examines these lexical items in relation to each part of speech and discusses their use in Guernésiais in the broader context of language contact. The study also considers whether, and how, lone English-origin lexical items become assimilated phonologically and morphosyntactically and whether frequency and motivation have a bearing on their usage.

This research focuses on the dissidence of Michif French, an endangered variety of Laurentian French spoken by a number of Métis in Western Canada. We examine the vernacular use of [tʊt] (tout/tous ‘all, every’) in a corpus of around 50 interviews collected in the Métis community of St. Laurent, Manitoba, in the 1980s. On the one hand, the internal analysis supports the hypothesis that it is related to the other varieties of Laurentian French. On the other hand, the external data reveal that [tʊt] is widely used, confirming the highly vernacular character of Michif French compared to the other varieties. Finally, the analysis of several interview extracts illustrates that the intensive use of vernacular variants acts as an identity marker, enabling speakers to lay claim not only to their culture, but also to a language they consider distinct from that of other French speakers.

This paper analyzes adjective positioning in French through the lens of language contact. Though some adjectives are nearly always either before their noun (pre-nominal) or after (post-nominal), others – usually adjectives that depict a positive or negative value – can be found in either position without any detectable semantic change. Our aim is to investigate the possible influence of English on the positioning of these adjectives by using a corpus of native French TV media as well as media translated from English. The categorical pre-nominal pattern of English might be causing a higher rate of pre-nominal adjectives to be used in translated media in comparison to native media. Our findings indicate that the translated corpus shows a preference for pre-nominal adjectives compared to the native French corpus. It was also revealed that some adjectives seem more flexible in translated media. Thus, while French media prefer one position over the other for a specific adjective, the translated media will more easily place the same adjective on either side of the noun. Therefore, we conclude that language contact has a role to play in the positioning of adjectives in TV media in French.

The final intonation in French wh-in-situ questions is subject to much debate. Although a wide variety of final pitch movements has been observed, recent studies generally agree on a tendency for final rises. In our study, we analysed the answered wh-in-situ questions (e.g. Tu veux savoir quoi ? – Tout ! ‘What do you want to know? – Everything!’) in a corpus of eleven audio books.

For our analysis, we used perceptual classifications by three annotators. Annotations included not only the perception of final intonational movement (‘rise’/‘fall’/‘plateau’), but also string-related (wh-lexeme; ‘wh-word final’/‘wh-word non-final’) and pragmatic (‘information-seeking’/‘non-information-seeking’; ‘hierarchical’/‘non-hierarchical’) features.

Our results show that a) even string-identical wh-in-situ questions can be pronounced with rises as well as falls and b) pragmatics affect the final pitch movement. If the speaker is hierarchically superior to the hearer, rises are less likely, and questions that are answered by the same speaker are even associated with a non-rising default. However, our data also suggest that pragmatic functions cannot be directly mapped to pitch movement. Information-seeking questions can be pronounced with all three final intonations and speakers may even choose opposite patterns for the same interrogative in the same context.

Dans le présent article, nous proposons une analyse de la mise en scènes de la (non-)réalisation du ne de négation et du il impersonnel dans un corpus de onze bandes dessinées de l’auteur franco-syrien Riad Sattouf. Notre objectif est double: d’une part, il s’agit de confronter cette mise en scène aux résultats des études de corpus oraux et, d’autre part, nous voulons la situer par rapport aux résultats d’autres études sur la mise en scène de l’oralité dans la bande dessinée. Pour ce faire, nous examinons des variables internes (p. ex. le type du forclusif ou les verbes impersonnels) et externes (p. ex. l’âge du personnage) et catégorisons nos résultats selon le modèle de proximité et de distance communicatives de Koch/Oesterreicher (22011). Le corpus utilisé se compose de toutes les bandes dessinées hors-série et d’une bande dessinée par série de Sattouf publiées entre 2003 et 2021. Notre article montre qu’il existe des similitudes entre la mise en scène sattoufienne et les pratiques orales au niveau des variables internes. Nous constatons cependant de grandes différences en ce qui concerne la variation de la (non-)réalisation du ne et du il en fonction des variables externes.

Deux manifestations d’anaphoriques fonctionnant « sans antécédent » (l’exophore et l’anaphore indirecte) sont analysées afin de mettre en évidence le fonctionnement véritable de l’anaphore. Nous verrons ainsi la manière dont ceux-ci réalisent une référence dépendante, non par le biais d’un élément particulier de leur co-texte (un « antécédent » conventionnel), mais plutôt en fonction d’une représentation discursive déjà installée en mémoire de travail. Celle-ci aura été évoquée dans l’interaction par les participants dans un événement communicatif, et sera supposée saillante au moment du renvoi.

Seront examinées dans ce sens les contributions des valeurs de genre portées par des pronoms anaphoriques, les propriétés intrinsèques de ceux-ci, la pertinence des « noms de base » pour les pronoms employés ainsi, puis le rôle de la prédication « hôte » dans son ensemble. Ainsi « libérés » de la contrainte d’une mise en relation préalable avec un « antécédent » textuel, leur contribution à la gestion et à l’évolution du discours sera plus aisément perceptible.

Intensifiers are known for their dynamic nature, due in part to the expressive function they serve. However, while the quantitative patterning of English intensifiers has been studied extensively, the intensifier system of French has yet to be well documented. This study therefore examines intensifier use from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective in the ESLO corpus of spoken Hexagonal French. The quantitative distributions of adjective intensifiers are compared across two corpora collected in 1970 and 2010. Results show a significant decrease in intensification rate over time. Analysis of individual intensifiers show some to have decreased in use over time (e.g. très, tellement), others to have increased (e.g. vraiment, tout), and others to appear only in the later sample (e.g. super, hyper). Longitudinal change is also found in the adjectival function (predicative vs. attributive) and collocational width of intensifiers. Relating to social factors, no significant gender difference is found between female and male speakers’ intensification rate over time. Furthermore, très dominates as the preferred intensifier among older generations, while younger speakers favour more varied intensifiers. Analyzing such changes in the use of intensifiers over the past half century contributes to a better understanding of the structure and development of the French intensifier system.

The aim of this study is to track the evolution in the use of the markers nenny, non + verb (non fait ‘no, it doesn’t’) and non in its absolute use between the middle of the 15th century and the end of the 18th. In Middle French, non already covers all the uses of the old markers nenny and non fait, but it remains in the minority. In Pre-Classical French (1550–1650), the frequency of nenny and non fait decreases considerably and, in Classical French (1650–1789), they become archaic. In the mid-17th century, non definitively assumes the functions of the medieval markers, which disappeared. The analysis of the temporal distribution of these markers helps to date the transition from ancient to modern uses. Several studies of phonetic, morphological and syntactic phenomena have also aimed to date the turning point between the medieval and the “classical” language, which occurs during the so-called “pre-classical” period. This research also seeks to contribute to the debate on the position of the boundary between Pre-Classical and Classical French on the basis of pragmatic criteria. The results support placing this boundary within the decade 1620–1630, as other studies did for morphosyntactic phenomena.

Les inputs audiovisuels tels que les films et les séries sont de plus en plus souvent utilisés dans les cours de langue étrangère (LE) car ils permettent une exposition authentique à la langue. Plusieurs études suggèrent qu’ils soutiennent l’apprentissage de nouveaux mots, mais que l’inclusion d’activités de pré-/post-visionnage pourrait renforcer cet apprentissage. La présente étude a été menée en Suisse alémanique et s’intéresse à l’effet de la présence et du placement d’une telle activité sur l’apprentissage de 51 mots cibles. Dans une étude within-design, 97 apprenants de français langue étrangère de 13–14 ans ont regardé trois extraits de la série télévisée « Plan Cœur » (Netflix, 2018). Les trois conditions étaient : épisode seul, épisode et activité avant, épisode et activité après. Les activités portaient sur la reconnaissance du sens des mots cibles. Trois post-tests immédiats et un post-test différé du même type (reconnaissance de sens) ont été effectués auprès des quatre classes de niveau scolaire supérieur (classes générales et prégymnasiales/GPG) et des deux classes de niveau scolaire inférieur (classes à exigences de base/EBA). Nos résultats confirment la supériorité des conditions avec activité ainsi qu’une différence (peu surprenante) selon le niveau scolaire. On trouve aussi une interaction entre le moment de test et condition avec plus de réponses correctes aux post-tests immédiats. La différence entre activité pré et post est cependant négligeable. Ces résultats soulignent l’importance des activités pré-/post-visionnage pour l’apprentissage de nouveaux mots en LE.

French is a typical verb-framed language, in which manner verbs cannot freely combine with result-denoting constituents in a single VP. Drawing on experimentally elicited production data on Hexagonal French, this study examines how the syntactic (in)flexibility of manner-of-creation verbs influences the lexicalization of the event result. As for result lexicalization within the VP headed by the manner verb, the study explores the occurrence of effected objects and resultative PPs. Thus, it addresses the availability of the material/product alternation (sculpter une poupée à partir du bois/sculpter le bois en (une) poupée) as a type of argument alternation, whose existence has been questioned for the Romance languages. Furthermore, it is explored how the verbs’ syntactic flexibility influences whether manner and result are lexicalized within a single VP at all or distributed onto different VPs. The results show that the material/product alternation does occur, but that only a limited set of verbs has the syntactic flexibility required for it. Additionally, it is shown that syntactic flexibility favors a denser packaging of conceptual components, since with verbs that admit an effected object, the result is realized more often in the VP than with verbs that do not.

Le français est une langue parlée par plusieurs centaines de millions de locuteurs en Europe, en Afrique et en Amérique. Une telle dispersion favorise la variation, mais de grands corpus unifiés permettant de rendre compte de cette variation à l’échelle mondiale restent rares, et dans tous les cas nécessitent des efforts financiers et humains non négligeables, à l’instar du projet de Phonologie du Français Contemporain. Dans cet article, nous présentons une alternative possible : les données participatives. Pour ce faire, nous présentons Lingua Libre, la médiathèque linguistique participative de Wikimédia France, et l’utilisons pour décrire la variation sur une opposition phonémique entre deux voyelles ouvertes, /a/ et /ɑ/, dans de nombreuses variétés de français. Les données de 38 locuteurs provenant de 26 points d’enquête sont traitées automatiquement et comparées aux mesures présentées dans la littérature passée. Les résultats montrent que la plateforme a le potentiel de donner des résultats conformes à ceux des études de terrain professionnelles. L’article conclut sur les avantages et les limites de la plateforme, tout en proposant des pistes d’amélioration.

Gender inclusive writing, a term that refers to a wide range of feminist linguistic practices aimed at reducing linguistic androcentrism, has been the topic of heated debates in France. Recent experimental studies have investigated its interpretation and showed that inclusive forms with the point médian (“étudiant·e·s”) and repetition (“étudiants et étudiantes”) feminize participants’ mental representations compared to the generic masculine (“étudiants”). In this article, we bring novel results from three experiments investigating the interpretation of these two inclusive forms in a more detailed context (university brochures). We find that the point médian is subject to “context dilution” effects: its meaning disappears in rich contexts, while repetition consistently changes readers’ mental representations, provided it is used systematically. We argue that our results show the necessity of looking at more ecological contexts in experimental (socio)linguistics for understanding the interpretation and processing of socially important linguistic variants.

This study explores the diachronic variation of mid-vowel aperture (/e, ɛ, o, ɔ/) in word-final and penultimate-syllable positions in vowel harmony (VH) contexts in declamatory/journalistic French from 1925 to 2023.

Our corpora include two pre-existing corpora – the INA broadcast archives corpus (1940–1999) and the ESTER corpus (2000–2004) – as well as two novel corpora, which include recordings from the Archives de la Parole by Hubert Pernot (1925–1929) and a selection from Radio France and YouTube spanning 2020 to 2023.

Our results suggest a general tendency of VH weakening over the last century. Additionally, we found a significant acoustic convergence in terms of aperture between vowels /o/ and /ɔ/, but no convergence between /e/ and /ɛ/ in word-final position, contrary to prior research.

An auxiliary imitation experiment was designed to investigate the correlation between the loud/projected voice in older recordings and the F1 of mid-vowels in VH contexts. The imitation experiment reveals a significant increase in F1 in loud declamatory speech. However, no effect of speech style on VH was observed, supporting the diachronic process of VH reduction.