The effect of schwa duration on pre-schwa mid-vowel lowering in French

Abstract

In Southern French, mid vowels are lowered in open syllables before schwa and in closed syllables. I propose that mid-vowel lowering is a strategy to enhance the perceptibility of a following consonant lacking good release cues. Open syllables followed by schwa behave like closed syllables and not like open syllables followed by a full vowel because, as a short vowel, schwa does not provide long enough release transitions to adequately cue a preceding consonant. This study provides evidence that the likelihood of lowering pre-schwa mid vowels decreases as schwa duration increases, in accordance with the perceptual hypothesis. The effect of schwa duration on mid vowel quality is derived in a model of phonology allowing for speaker-specific details of phonetic realization to influence phonotactics.

Contrast enhancement as motivation for closed syllable laxing and open syllable tensing

“…The reason could be that they are short (and typically subject to syncope across languages), and therefore do not provide sufficiently distinct release transitions (or any release transitions in the case of syncope). The hypothesis that laxing in these contexts is related to the duration of the vowel in the following syllable is supported by Storme's (2017a) experimental results, according to which French speakers who lax mid vowels in pre-schwa syllables (i.e. Southern speakers) have shorter schwas on average than speakers who do not (i.e.…”