De la possibilité d’un relâchement des voyelles hautes dans les troncations finissant par /v, z, ʒ, ʁ/ en français québécois
Mélanie Lancien
Quebec French has three high tense vowels (/i, y, u/), and three high lax vowels ([ɪ, ʏ, ʊ]), the laxed ones being considered as allophones of the tensed ones that arise when the vowel is in a syllable closed by a non-lengthening consonant (Walker, 1984; Dumas, 1987; among others). However, Côté (2012) hypothesizes that this laxing could occur in truncations ending with a lengthening consonant (Truncation(_R)). In this pilot study, we explore this hypothesis. We used short texts (read by two native speakers) to induce high vowels in Truncation(_R) as well as in positions forming minimal (PaireMinimale(_R) / semi-minimal pairs (ending with a non-lengthening consonant – PaireMinimale(_K)) with Truncation(_R). Our first temporal analysis (ANOVAs) show shorter vowels in Truncation(_R) than in PairMin(_R), and a more qualitative analysis makes it possible to observe spectral variations between Truncation(_R), PaireMinimale(_R) and PaireMinimale(_K), in particular through mean F1 and F2 (Hz).