LINGUIST List 15.3479
Mon Dec 13 2004
Sum: French Lip Rounding
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1. Ian
Wilson,
French Lip Rounding
Message 1: French Lip Rounding
Date: 11-Dec-2004
From: Ian Wilson <ilwilsoninterchange.ubc.ca>
Subject: French Lip Rounding
Regarding query http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-3329.html#2
Although there were only 2 responses to my query on differences in the
degree of lip rounding in Quebec French versus European French, there were
other requests to pass on whatever I learned.
Thanks to Joshua Viau and Geoff Morrison for responding with papers. Here's
a brief summary of what they told me:
''Barnes & Kavitskaya (2002) made measurements from one speaker (presumably
of European French) that suggested schwa's rounding gesture was partially
retained even in tokens where schwa was ''deleted'' on the surface. Here's
a link:
http://www.yale.edu/linguist/faculty/BLSHandout.pdf
However, Cote & Morrison (2004) recently failed to replicate this result
with a Quebecois speaker."
They also provided a link to Cote & Morrison's LabPhon 9 poster:
http://www.ualberta.ca/~gsm2/C%F4t%E9_&_Morrison_%282004%29_Experimental_evidence_and_the_nature_of_the_schwa-zero_alternation_in_French__LabPhon9_poster.pdf
Anecdotally, Geoff's colleague (a Quebecois speaker?) tells him that she
can spot a European French speaker coming down the street because they have
a rounded lip position even when they are not speaking. This is an
interesting observation that is certainly not limited to lip rounding or
European French. Many (non lip-reading) people have said they can watch
someone speak without hearing their voice and tell what language they're
speaking.
All of this surely relates to one's underlying articulatory setting,
something I'm trying to measure in our speech lab.
Ian Wilson
University of British Columbia
http://www.linguistics.ubc.ca/People/ian.htm
Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics
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