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Markedness, Faithfulness, Vowel Quality and Syllable Structure in French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2003

CAROLINE FÉRY
CAROLINE FÉRY
Affiliation:
University of Potsdam
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Abstract

The quality of vowels in French depends to a large extent on the kind of syllables they are in. Tense vowels are often in open syllables and lax vowels in closed ones. This generalisation, which has been called loi de position in the literature, is often overridden by special vowel-consonant co-occurrence restrictions obscuring this law. The article shows first that the admission of semisyllables in the phonology of French explains a large number of counterexamples. Many final closing consonants on the phonetic representation can be understood as onsets of following rime-less syllables, opening in this way the last full syllable. Arguments coming from phonotactic regularities support this analysis. The second insight of the article is that Optimality Theory is a perfect framework to account for the intricate data bearing on the relationship between vowels and syllable structure. The loi de position is an effect dubbed Emergence of the Unmarked, instantiated only in case no higher-ranking constraint renders it inactive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , September 2003 , pp. 247 - 280
Copyright
2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Parts of this work have been presented at Rutgers University, Cornell University, Laboratoire de Phonétique de Paris and the International Phonology Conference in Nantes between April 2000 and May 2001. I would like to thank the audience, as well as or especially Gilles Boyé, Kirsten Brock, Nick Clements, François Dell, Gisbert Fanselow, Tonio Green, Chantal Lyche, Marc van Oostendorp, Annie Rialland, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Ruben van de Vijver and Richard Wiese for feedback. Many thanks also to two anonymous reviewers, who have provided many useful comments. This work is part of the DFG Forschergruppe ‘Conflicting Rules’ of the University of Potsdam.