Re: Nasal vowels (was Re: French spelling scheme)

At 5:33 pm -0400 5/5/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Eric Christopherson wrote:
>> I was just wondering the other day why the French nasal vowels evolved the
>> way they did. Anyone know? Is there something in phonetic/phonological
>> theory saying that nasal vowels tend to be qualitatively different (aside
>> from their nasality of course) from their oral counterparts?
>
>Well, nasal vowels tend to be perceptually less distinct than oral
>vowels.  Thus, there's often fewer nasal vowels than oral vowels.
Which is perhaps why the French have only low nasal vowels.

But AFAIK there's no real reason why other nasal vowels shouldn't occur.
Indeed, Portuguese has both mid and high nasal vowels.

Old French, indeed, also had mid & high nasal vowels, as well as two nasal
diphthongs: /a~/, /e~/, /i~/, /o~/, /y~/; /e~i/, /o~i/.
(There were also nasalized rising diphthongs; but the first element of
these became semivowels /j/, /w/ or /H/ early on.)

Between the 13th & 16th centuries, the nasal vowels become lower resulting
in the familiar ones of modern French, thus:
/e~/ --> /E~/
/i~/ --> /e~/ --> /E~/
/o~/ --> /O~/
/y~/ --> /2~/ --> /9~/

The two diphthongs had been reduced to /E~/ and /wE~/ by the 16th cent.
Apparently some 17th cent. grammarians tried to preserve a difference
between the /E~/ derived from /e~i/ and /E~/ derived from /i~/, but in vain.

Apparently, in the common speech of the 16th & 17th centuries /a~/ and /O~/
were often confused (as they inevitably seem to be by anglophones) but,
except, I'm told, for a few areas, the two vowels are distinct in modern
French.  However over the past half century or so, there has been a marked
tendency for /9~/ to become unrounded and merge with /E~/, so that, e.g.
_lundi_ is now usually pronounce /lE~di/.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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