Re: OT: Nasalization of French Vowels

Dave writes:

>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]
>
>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 language.
>So, a couple of questions:
>
>1.) To what words do the phonetic forms above refer?
>2.) Are the phonetic transcriptions accurate (i.e., is there
>actually a difference in vowel quality, like between "bon" and
>"bonne")?
/bO~te/ is "goodness" or "kindness", spelled "bonté"

If /bOnte/ exists, I'm unaware of it.

I'm freeforming here, but I think, insofar as French is concerned,
nasalization occurs when the nasal is at the end of the word or if
the following letter in a word is a consonant. Hence "bonté",
"compte", "fanfreluche", etc. When followed by a vowel, nasalization
doesn't kick in:  "anneau " is /ano/, not /a~no/, linoléum
/linOleOm/, not /lE~oleOm/, moineau, etc.

I think that works, which is why I don't think /bOnte/ is  an actual
possibility in French.  At the moment, I can't think of any words
where that scenario works.

Kou

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