Re: OT: Nasalization of French Vowels

En réponse à David Peterson :


>Hey all,
>
>The proposition has been put forth in a phonetics class here that you 
>could get the following (as we all know) en Francais:
>
>beau [bO]
>bon [bO~]
>
>However, there's also these that were put forth:
>
>? [bO~te]
>? [bOnte]
Sorry, but the second one doesn't exist. [bO~te] is written "bonté" and is 
the abstract noun associated with "bon", but *[bOnte] just doesn't exist 
(although it isn't impossible - and would probably be written *"bonneté" -).

>Notice that the last [O] is NOT nasalized, even though it comes before a 
>nasal.  To me, it would seem like any vowel coming before any nasal would 
>be *phonetically* nasalized, no matter the languag
Correct, except for French, where nasalisation is strictly phonemic (thus 
not phonetic nasalisation).

>e.  So, a couple of questions:
>
>1.) To what words do the phonetic forms above refer?
As I said, *[bOnte] doesn't exist. It *is* possible, and would be valid, 
but it just doesn't occur (or at least I've never heard it). If it existed, 
again,  it would be written *"bonneté". Writing it as three syllables, 
although one with a silent "e" (very common in French even in the middle of 
words) is the way our orthography indicates coda nasals that don't nasalise 
the previous vowel (which explains also why "bonne" is written with a 
silent "e", making it in writing two syllables. It's to mark the 
pronunciation [bOn] without nasalisation). As I read once, nasalisation 
often spreads phonetically (in some languages, all the vowels of a word are 
nasalised as soon as it has a single nasal in it), but different languages 
spread this nasalisation to different extents, and there's nothing that 
prevents some language not to spread it *at all*. And this language happens 
to be French. Remember: language universal extremely often have exceptions.

>2.) Are the phonetic transcriptions accurate (i.e., is there actually a 
>difference in vowel quality, like between "bon" and "bonne")?
Yes. [bOn] is *really* pronounced with an unnasalised [O]. Just like 
"panne" is [pan], with the same [a] as in "panneau" [pa.no] where the [n] 
is on onset.

However, this is valid only for Standard French and most of its accents. 
Some accents (especially in the South) actually forbid coda nasals. In 
those accents, the otherwise silent "e" are pronounced (as schwas) and 
transform the nasal into an onset consonant. Seeing this, it is my opinion 
that non-nasalising coda nasals come from former onset consonants whose 
vowel disappeared (which explains also the way we write them). And although 
they became coda consonants, they kept their behaviour: since onset nasals 
don't nasalise the previous vowel, those coda nasals don't either (unlike 
the *original* coda nasals, which did nasalise the previous vowel, and 
eventually disappeared, leading to the nasal vowels). Diachronic sound 
changes often lead to those kinds of strange behaviours :))) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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