The Phonologie du français contemporain project
in Quebec
Methodological considerations and dialectometric application
This chapter presents the PFC-Quebec corpus (440
speakers, 400+ hours of recordings) of French spoken in Quebec,
especially its Laurentian variety. After a brief overview of
Quebec’s geolinguistic research, it discusses the methodological
adjustments adopted in the application of the general PFC
(Phonologie du français contemporain) protocol
to a specific variety that diverges in many respects from the French
spoken in other areas. The relevance and potential of this corpus is
illustrated by a dialectometric analysis of a small number of words
whose pronunciation is subject to geolinguistic variation within
Quebec. The data reveal quite complex geophonological structures and
largely, but not completely, converge with the self-representation
data from Avanzi and Thibault
(2020).
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Overview of geolinguistics in Quebec
- 3.The PFC-Quebec corpus
- 3.1A brief typology of French varieties in Canada
- 3.2Survey points and speakers
- 3.3Tasks
- 3.4Data processing
- 4.Dialectometric application
- 4.1Distribution of long and short variants of vowels
- 4.2Identifying topolectal boundaries
- 5.Conclusions
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
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References