Transmission and diffusion: Linguistic change in the regional French of Béarn

Abstract

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.

The role of speaker sex and sexuality in an ongoing sound change: Nasal vowels in Parisian French

“…Carignan, 2011). Mooney (2016b) has also identified a nasal vowel shift in the regional French of Béarn, southwestern France, where the youngest generation have been shown to lead three systematic ongoing changes in the nasal vowel system: /ɑ /-backing; /ɔ /-centralisation, and /oe ̃/-fronting. This push chain shift is argued to have been initiated by the individual adoption of one supralocal feature, /ɑ /-backing, in regional French, with /ɔ / and /oe ̃/ moving forward in the vowel space to preserve the functional integrity of the four term nasal vowel system in southern regional French.…”

Reflections of the French nasal vowel shift in orthography on Twitter

“…There is ongoing debate over whether a distinction is maintained between /ɛ / and /oe ˜/ or a complete merger of the two vowels has occurred. Walter (1994), Pooley (2006) and Mooney (2016) claim that /ɛ / and /oe ˜/ have merged in NMF, although the four-vowel distinction is maintained by some speakers in Belgium, Switzerland and southern France (Coquillon and Turcsan, 2012;Hambye and Simon, 2012;Racine and Andreassen, 2012). Malecot and Lindsay (1976) find that speakers do not make a distinction in their production of these two vowels, but when asked to indicate the most 'natural' pronunciation in a listening task, they preferentially indicate higher realizations for /ɛ / and lower realizations for /oe ˜/.…”

“…I have already mentioned the lack of a /ɛ /-/oe ˜/ merger in some European varieties, which also applies to several African varieties of French (Bordal, 2012;Boutin, Gess and Guèye, 2012). Mooney (2016) also describes a chain shift in the nasal vowels of the Béarn variety located in southwest France, motivated by transfer of the /ɑ / > /ɔ / shift from NMF, resulting in /ɔ / becoming centralized and /oe ˜/ being fronted. The counterclockwise chain shift in NMF contrasts with a clockwise chain shift in the nasal vowels of Canadian French varieties (Hansen, 2001a).…”

2. Quantitative approaches for modelling variation and change: a case study of sociophonetic data from Occitan

“…Variationist studies of Canadian varieties of French has been particularly progressive in using the variable rule program to analyse spontaneous speech data; for example, Paradis/Deshaies (1990) on stress alignment in Québec, Poplack (1992) on the subjunctive, Nagy/Blondeau (1999) on double subject marking in Montréal, King/Nadasdi (2003) on future temporal reference in Acadia, Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) on rhotics in Montréal, King/Martineau/Mougeon (2011) on first-person plural pronouns, and Comeau/King/Butler (2012) on past-tense aspectual distinctions in Acadia. More recently, other researchers have taken advantage of the advanced modelling techniques offered by the R environment such as, for example, Roberts (2012) on future temporal reference in Martinique, Burnett/Tremblay/Blondeau (2015) on negative concord in Montréal, and Mooney (2015b;2016a;2016b) on dialect levelling in the phonological system of southwestern metropolitan French. To my knowledge, no studies of language variation and change have used the variable rule program on data from minority languages in the francophone context, the so-called langues de France, or regional languages.…”