Doctoral Dissertation Research: Structural differences between French and Picard: Evidence from phonetics and phonology

博士论文研究：法语和皮卡德语之间的结构差异：来自语音学和音系学的证据

• 批准号: 1360758
• 负责人: Julie Auger
• 金额: $ 1.24万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-03-15 至 2016-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1360758&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Structural; differences

When should a dialect be considered a different language? Though French and the Picard language both developed from Latin, the political and linguistic unification of France has led to a decline in the use of Picard. Today, Picard is classified as "severely endangered" by UNESCO, and considerable uncertainty has been expressed regarding its independence as a separate language. At worst, it is labeled a corrupted dialect of French, but recent linguistic analyses have revealed both important structural differences and complexities in Picard.This project aims to expand that body of evidence with respect to nasality. Though the two languages share identical inventories of nasal and oral vowels, they are reported to display opposite patterns of regressive nasalization, i.e., where nasal airflow overlaps with a vowel before nasal consonants. Several phonetic studies have shown that this applies to high vowels /i, y, u/ in French, which have no nasal counterpart in either language. However, there is disagreement about whether this occurs at significant rates, and whether it is part of the phonological grammar of French or a minor phonetic reflex. Meanwhile, a major reference grammar of Picard reports that this process applies only to /a, e, o/, which do have nasal counterparts in both languages. However, in contrast with the French studies, there are no phonetic data for Picard to support these claims. Given the possibility that the French government might adopt policies that aim to increase its recognition and support for its regional languages and the general lack of empirical evidence concerning the languages that are most closely related to French, the proposed research is both urgent and extremely timely.Nasal acoustic energy will be measured to document which vowels undergo nasalization, and to what extent, in Picard, Standard French, and the regional French of Picardie. This project will offer not only a phonological analysis of an understudied language, but also a comparative analysis of two closely related languages. In addition, this study may reveal insights concerning structural relations among nasal vowels. By determining major phonological differences from low-level phonetic phenomena, this study will contribute objective criteria by which a full-fledged language may be distinguished from a dialect, and its methodology is easily adapted to any setting where similar work is needed.

方言应何时被视为另一种语言？尽管法语和Picard语言都是从拉丁语发展而来的，但法国的政治和语言统一导致Picard使用的使用下降。如今，皮卡德被联合国教科文组织列为“严重濒危”，并且已经对其独立性作为一种独立的语言表示了相当大的不确定性。最糟糕的是，它被标记为法语的损坏方言，但最近的语言分析揭示了PICARD的重要结构差异和复杂性。该项目旨在扩大有关鼻腔的证据。尽管两种语言共享鼻和口服元音的相同清单，但据报道它们显示出相反的回归鼻音模式，即鼻气流与鼻辅音之前的元音重叠。几项语音研究表明，这适用于高元音 / i，y，u / in French，这两种语言都没有鼻腔对应物。但是，关于这种情况是否以很大的速度出现，以及它是法语语法还是次要语音反射的一部分存在分歧。同时，PICARD的主要参考语法报告说，此过程仅适用于 /a，e，o /，这确实具有两种语言的鼻腔对应物。但是，与法国研究相反，Picard没有语音数据来支持这些主张。鉴于法国政府可能会采取政策，旨在增加其对区域语言的认可和支持，并且普遍缺乏与法语最密切相关的语言的经验证据，因此拟议的研究既紧迫又及时。该项目不仅将对研究的语言进行语音分析，还将对两种密切相关的语言进行比较分析。此外，这项研究可能揭示了有关鼻元音之间结构关系的见解。通过确定低级语音现象的主要语音差异，这项研究将构成客观标准，通过该标准可以将全面的语言与方言区分开来，并且其方法很容易适应需要类似工作的任何设置。