A Tri-dimensional model for the study of sound change

Isabelle Malderez

Sat. 11:00-12:40 A

I intend to present a tri-dimensional model for research on phonetic variation and its application to the study of the dynamic synchrony of rounded oral vowels in the French of Ile-de-France. This approach conjointly examines the three domains of appearance of ongoing sound changes: production, perception and spelling. The study of production is very well defined in variationist linguistics: I will explain here especially the two other aspects of my approach. Janson (1986) showed that category perception can reveal the ongoing changes between phonemes by comparing two populations which represent successive generations. The experiment consists of a test where subjects have to categorize a set of synthetic stimuli stemming from a linear interpolation of the two targets' parameters. According to Janson, when there is an ongoing change, the two populations present different results as to the categorization of the same stimuli: the phonematic frontier in the continuum joining up the two phonotypes is not the same for the two age groups.

As for spelling, to list the expected mistakes in French, one must just consult the table of contents of specialized scholarly books: doubling (or not) of consonants, spelling of nasal vowels, confusion in accents, oversight or addition of an 'e', etc... These "mistakes", in the three last examples, are linked with ongoing or completed sound changes, picked out and studied for a long time. However the teachers (and more particularly primary school teachers), meet with atypical lexical spelling mistakes. I mean by atypical a spelling mistake that is not foreseen in the regulation's exercises: if 'des chevals' (horses) is a typical mistake (irregularly plural), 'des chovaux' is not one. Fonagy (1971, 1989) considers that spelling mistakes of young children often reflect their "phonological conception". So, systematic collection of atypical lexical spelling mistakes would reveal the emerging sound changes "below the level of social awareness" (Labov 1972: 178).

References

Janson, Tore (1986), Sound Change in Perception: An Experiment, in Experimental Phonology, J.J. Ohala & J.J. Jaeger (eds.), Orlando: Academic Press, 253-260.

Fonagy, Ivan & Peter Fonagy (1971), Helyesirási hibák haszna, Magyar Nyelvör, 95, 70-89.

Fonagy, Ivan (1989), Le français change de visage?, Revue Romane, 24 (2), 225-254.

Labov, William (1972), Sociolinguistic patterns, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Malderez, Isabelle (1995), Contribution à la synchronie dynamique du français d'Ile -de-France: le cas des voyelles orales arrondies, Unpublished doctoral thesis, Denis Diderot University (Paris 7), Paris.