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21 French

  • Marie-Hélène Côté
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Abstract

The phonology of French has a long descriptive and theoretical tradition, which however has been partly built on an idealized standard variety of the language, overlooking its wide array of dialectal variation. Recent corpus-based work has brought about significant advances in the description and understanding of the sound system of French, as it is spoken around the world. This chapter presents the main segmental, suprasegmental, and morphophonological features of French, including schwa and liaison. It focuses on a standard variety, globally defined as spoken in the northern half of France without a perceptible dialectal or sociolectal accent, and on the main dialectal features, found more specifically in three geographical areas: Canada, southern France, and Switzerland.

Abstract

The phonology of French has a long descriptive and theoretical tradition, which however has been partly built on an idealized standard variety of the language, overlooking its wide array of dialectal variation. Recent corpus-based work has brought about significant advances in the description and understanding of the sound system of French, as it is spoken around the world. This chapter presents the main segmental, suprasegmental, and morphophonological features of French, including schwa and liaison. It focuses on a standard variety, globally defined as spoken in the northern half of France without a perceptible dialectal or sociolectal accent, and on the main dialectal features, found more specifically in three geographical areas: Canada, southern France, and Switzerland.

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