Weight and length in conservative regional French

Abstract

This paper investigates the degree to which, in a Moraic Phonology framework, coda weight can be seen as responsible for nuclear length in several varieties of French. First, I outline the distribution of vowel length as detailed in conservative variants of French (Passy, 1913; Grammont, 1928). The proposed analysis discusses several length-related processes that are claimed to result from a very simple operation: the removal of an association line that links the moraic tier to certain terminal segments in the melody. Extraprosodicity at the word-level is shown to play a crucial role in determining which elements qualify as mora-bearing units. The second part carries the same analysis into the realm of a variety of regional French, that of Lower Normandy (LNRF), where length contrasts regulate a large part of the phonology. Two features stand out as separating LNRF from Conservative French: the lexical aspect of length — considerably more enhanced in LNRF — and the relationship between nucleus length and the weight of a subset of latent coda consonants — sporadic in Conservative French, systematic in LNRF.