LINGUIST List 17.2572: Phonology: Poliquin: 'Canadian French Vowel Harmony'

LINGUIST List 17.2572

Tue Sep 12 2006

Diss: Phonology: Poliquin: 'Canadian French Vowel Harmony'

Editor for this issue: Hannah Morales <hannahlinguistlist.org>

Directory 1. Gabriel Poliquin, Canadian French Vowel Harmony

Message 1: Canadian French Vowel Harmony
Date: 11-Sep-2006
From: Gabriel Poliquin <poliquinudel.edu>
Subject: Canadian French Vowel Harmony

Institution: Harvard University Program: Department of Linguistics Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2006

Author: Gabriel Poliquin

Dissertation Title: Canadian French Vowel Harmony

Dissertation URL: www.gabrielpoliquin.com

Linguistic Field(s): Phonology
Subject Language(s): French (fra)
Dissertation Director:
Andrew Nevins Donca Steriade
Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis provides a phonological, psycholinguistic and phoneticdescription of vowel harmony in Canadian French (CF), as well as atheoretical account of the phenomenon showing that the CF facts may only beaccounted for in derivational frameworks that include the notion of'cycle.' CF [ATR] vowel harmony is regressive, optional, and parasitic onthe feature [+high]. CF [ATR] harmony involves spreading of a [-ATR]feature from a final [+high] vowel in a closed syllable to other [+high]vowels within the same word that are in non-final open syllables (e.g.[fi.lIp] or [fI.lIp] are both acceptable variants for 'Phillip'). Thethesis describes and explains the four key attributes of harmony in thislanguage:

1) There is inter-speaker (and possibly intra-speaker) variation withrespect to whether harmony is applied locally and/or iteratively.Variation with respect to these parameters leads to the existence of threepatterns of harmony, as evidenced by words of more than two syllables.There is the local non-iterative pattern, e.g. [i.lI.sIt] 'illicit', thenon-local pattern, e.g. [I.li.sIt] and the 'across-the-board' pattern[I.lI.sIt].

2) As shown in 1), there exists a pattern of non-local harmony, in whichthe target vowel is separated from the trigger by another [+high] vowel.

3) Harmony is counterbled by a process of 'pre-fricative tensing,' whichleads to opaque allophony.

4) Harmony applies cyclically, but is then counterbled by another'open-syllable tensing' process, which results in another case of opacity. For example, harmony can apply in a word like [mY.zIk] ('music'), but ifwe concatenate a resyllabifying suffix like [al], we obtain [mY.zi.kal]('musical'). The initial [+high] vowel can be [-ATR], since harmonyapplied in the stem, but the resyllabified trigger must be [+ATR], by anopen syllable tensing rule.

The thesis makes the following claim: CF vowel harmony shows verycompellingly that models of the phonological component must includemechanisms accounting for non-local relations, derivational opacity and theinteraction between phonology and morphology.