Ongoing Phonologization of word-final voicing alternations in 2 Romance languages: Romanian & French
Channel: Elles Comme Linguistes
Date: 2020-10-30

DISCLAIMER: Ceci n'est PAS une vidéo de vulgarisation. Il s'agit d'une présentation donnée en anglais à une conférence spécialisée du papier suivant:
Hutin, Mathilde, Jatteau, Adèle, Vasilescu, Ioana, Lamel, Lori, Adda-Decker, Martine. 2020. Ongoing Phonologization of word-final voicing alternations in two Romance languages: Romanian and French. Proceedings of Interspeech 2020. Shanghai, China. DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2020-1460 (hal-02977812)

Abstract: Phonologization is a process whereby phonetic substance becomes phonological structure. The process involves at least two steps: (i) a universal phonetic (‘automatic’) variation becomes a language-specific (‘speaker-controlled’) pattern, (ii) the language-specific pattern becomes a phonological (‘structured’) object. This paper will focus on the first step and ask the question of whether three universal phonetic variations of the laryngeal feature of word-final codas (final devoicing, voicelessness assimilation and voicing assimilation) are becoming language-specific patterns in two Romance languages, Romanian and French. Our results suggest that neutralization processes (final devoicing) might be beginning their phonologization process in both French and Romanian whereas assimilation processes (regressive assimilation of voicing and voicelessness) remain universal phonetic tendencies.

Index Terms: Large corpora, forced alignment, phonologization, lenition, fortition, voicing, devoicing, assimilation, French, Romanian