LINGUIST List 22.3166
Mon Aug 08 2011
Diss: Phonology/Socioling: Villeneuve: 'A Sociolinguistic Study of ...'
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1. Anne-José Villeneuve ,
A Sociolinguistic Study of Vimeu French
Message 1: A Sociolinguistic Study of Vimeu French
Date: 07-Aug-2011
From: Anne-José Villeneuve <avilleneindiana.edu>
Subject: A Sociolinguistic Study of Vimeu French
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Institution: Indiana University
Program: French Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2011
Author: Anne-José Villeneuve
Dissertation Title: A Sociolinguistic Study of Vimeu French
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonology
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): French (fra)
Picard (pcd)
Dissertation Director:
Julie Auger
Dissertation Abstract:
The French Constitution states that 'la langue de la République est lefrançais' [the language of the French Republic is French]. Yet, thisprescription does not make France a linguistically uniform country, giventhat what we hear in many areas are regional varieties that may have arisenin part due to the influence of obsolescent regional languages.
This study examines the variety of French spoken in Vimeu, a rural area ofnorthwestern France which borders on Upper Normandy and where Picard, aGallo-Romance language, still enjoys a relative vitality. Based on a corpusof sociolinguistic interviews I conducted in 2006-2007 with 31 adultspeakers of Vimeu French, this study investigates the extent to which localFrench features are constrained by social and linguistic factors. Byanalyzing data from both Picard-French bilinguals and French monolinguals,I also look into the possible influence of Picard on Vimeu French.
Using the methods of variationist sociolinguistics, I argue that the use ofphonological and morphophonological features which distinguish this varietyfrom the standard are influenced by a speaker's sex, age, social network orcultural identity, and - most importantly - bilingual status. Moreover, aquantitative analysis of variables that Picard shares with colloquialFrench - liquid deletion in word-final Obstruent-Liquid (OL) clusters, forinstance - reveals finer-grained differences between the bilinguals'linguistic system and monolinguals' linguistic system.
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