Cet article présente une analyse multifactorielle du comportement des consonnes liquides post-obstruantes en position finale de mot en français. Plus précisément, nous nous intéressons au phénomène par lequel un <l> ou <r> final dans la transcription orthographique d’un mot n’est pas prononcé dans la parole continue, p. ex. comme dans les items « découvre » et « terrible », respectivement prononcés [dekuv] et [teʁʁb] au lieu de [dekuvʁʁ] et [teʁʁibl]. Au total, plus de 2500 items comportant un cluster obstruante+liquide en fin de mot ont été extraits d’un corpus de parole d’une durée de 13 heures, qui a été étiqueté à différents niveaux. Ce corpus comprend les productions de 120 locuteurs originaires de 3 pays francophones (Belgique, France et Suisse), enregistrés dans deux tâches différentes (lecture et conversation). Pour déterminer ce qui affecte la (non-)prononciation de <l> ou <r> dans ces contextes, une douzaine de prédicteurs de différentes natures sont testés dans un même modèle statistique. Les caractéristiques phonétiques telles que le lieu et le mode d’articulation, le contexte droit, le statut prosodique et le taux d’articulation; mais aussi les prédicteurs liés aux locuteurs (pays d’origine, sexe, âge, classe sociale) et au style de parole sont pris en compte. Des modèles mixtes linéaires généralisés révèlent que seulement la moitié d’entre eux ressortent comme jouant un rôle significatif sur la variable à l’étude. Les résultats sont discutés à la lumière dʼétudes antérieures portant sur les aspects sociolinguistiques des variantes de prononciation en français.

This study explores variation in the use of English-origin verbs in Quebec French. These lexical borrowings are usually integrated grammatically into the receiving language (Poplack, 2018), as in il va crasher and elle m’a ghosté in Quebec French. However, a new lexical insertion strategy for English-origin verbs has been observed in the past few years: verbal borrowings can lack overt morphological integration, as in il va crash and elle m’a ghost. This article examines the use of English-origin verbs in Quebec French from a variationist perspective by focusing on 1) possible correlations between speakers and how they evaluate the different lexical insertion strategies, and 2) the social factors that constrain the use of morphologically unintegrated English-origin verbs. Results from quantitative analyses based on 675 participants indicate that young Quebecers from Montreal with a high level of proficiency in English are the ones who use this morphologically unintegrated form the most and evaluate it more positively. This unintegrated form poses a theoretical problem according to Poplack’s (2018) theory, for which nonce borrowings are morphologically and syntactically integrated into the receiving language.

The study compared the syntactic complexity and the use of logical connectors in summaries written in French by two groups of students: speakers of French as first language (L1) and peers in a French-immersion program (L2) from grade nine to university. Both L1 and L2 groups of university students demonstrated more general complexity in their written summaries than less mature writers. However, the use of phrasal elaboration was apparent just at the upper secondary and university levels with L1 students. Both groups generally tend to overuse causal connectors while underusing additive and adversative connectors compared to the author’s use in the source text. Yet both groups employ significantly more adversative connectors just at the post-secondary level. The only difference observed between L1 and L2 writers was in the diversity of connector words used in the summary, with the former group using a richer, more diverse vocabulary. Several measures for succinctness differentiated L1 and L2 students in early secondary with the latter group condensing the source text less than L1 students. Correlation analysis suggested that many measures of syntactic complexity and connector use are inextricably linked.

This article describes the usage of partial interrogatives without wh such as And you went…? in French and Spanish, and analyses the variation between such in-situ-Ø and in-situ-wh-interrogatives such as And you went where? On the basis of an analysis of in-situ-Ø-interrogatives in a corpus of spoken French and Spanish, these interrogatives are described as a particularly efficient means of realizing an information request. Due to the fact that their use is bound to contexts in which the information request is highly expected by the hearer, they can be produced using a minimal syntactic format and simultaneously ensure that the addressee produces the desired response. In comparison, the use of in-situ-wh is less context-sensitive. The analysis also investigates the possibility of differences between French and Spanish as regards the productivity of these interrogatives. An acceptability study of these interrogatives finds no significant difference in terms of the productivity and acceptability of in-situ-Ø in French and Spanish, whereas in-situ-wh reaches a higher acceptability in French than in Spanish. I interpret these results as evidence for a description of in-situ-Ø as an ad-hoc interactional resource whose use does not depend on conventionalization processes, whereas information-requesting in-situ-wh has become conventional in French.