This article examines first to second language (L1-to-L2) phonetic transfer in the speech of ten Occitan–French bilinguals, focusing on the mid-vowels in each of their languages. Investigating transfer in a situation of long-term societal language contact aims to shed light on the emergence of regional French phonological features from contact with Occitan. Using a sociophonetic methodology, the concept of equivalence classification (Flege 1988) is investigated, that is, that L2 words will be (initially) decomposed into familiar L2 sound categories, causing L1 and L2 sounds to resemble each other phonetically. The consequences of language contact are modelled statistically using an original corpus of over 1200 vowel tokens. The findings show that equivalence classification may not lead to equated sounds coming to resemble each other phonetically, suggesting necessary revisions to the speech learning model (SLM) hypothesis, and the need to consider the influence of sociolinguistic factors in situations of long-term language contact is emphasised.

The region of Béarn denotes the historically Romance-speaking part of the modern-day Pyrénées-Atlantiques département in south-western France. The langue d’oc or southern Gallo-Romance variety historically spoken in Béarn, commonly referred to as ‘Béarnais’, is a dialect of Gascon. This variety may also be referred to by its autoglossonym ‘Biarnés’ though the French term is the most widely used designation for the regional language. The number of Gascon speakers in south-western France increases steadily from north (Bordeaux) to south (the Pyrenees) and because Béarn is the area of linguistic Gascony with the highest recorded number of Gascon speakers (Moreux 2004), Béarnais may be considered the principal surviving dialect of Gascon, though other surviving dialects, such as ‘Gascon de Chalosse’, and ‘Landais’, are still spoken and written.

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms 1 'C'EST JEULI, LA GASCEUGNE!' L'ANTÉRIORISATION DU PHONÈME /ɔ/ DANS LE FRANÇAIS RÉGIONAL DU BÉARN RésuméLe français parisien vernaculaire connaît depuis longtemps un changement linguistique qui trouve son origine dans la classe ouvrière: une prononciation de la voyelle /ɔ/ dans des mots tels que joli ou Gascogne correspondante à une orthographe jeuli ou Gasceugne. Des études antérieures, dans le cadre de la linguistique fonctionnelle ou de la sociolinguistique, indiquent que cette forme se diffuse de Paris aux régions, particulièrement sur les deux tiers nord du territoire français. Autrement dit, cette prononciation devient de plus en plus associée à une zone géographique étendue au-delà de Paris. Cet article fournit une analyse acoustique détaillée de cette prononciation dans la région du Béarn, 800 kilomètres de Paris, dans le sud-

This article examines the seemingly dichotomous linguistic processes of transmission and diffusion (Labov, 2007) in the regional variety of French spoken in Béarn, southwestern France. Using a sociophonetic apparent time methodology, an analysis of nasal vowel quality provides evidence for the advancement of linguistic changes from below taking place between successive generations during the transmission process, as well as for change from above taking place in the variety as a result of exposure to diffusing non-local varieties of French. The results address Labov's (2007) assertion that it is rare to investigate incremental changes occurring from below in European dialectological studies and shed light on the transmission–diffusion interface by showing the adoption of an individual change from above to instigate a faithfully-transmitted counterclockwise chain shift in the regional French nasal vowel system.

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