This volume presents a selection of French varieties representing the great diversity of this language along geographical, social, and stylistic dimensions. Twelve illustrations from regions as far removed as Western Canada and Central Africa represent widely divergent social contexts of language use. Each chapter is based on original surveys conducted within the framework of the Phonology of Contemporary French project, described in the Introduction. These surveys constitute an invaluable source of new data for researchers, as many of the varieties included are otherwise undocumented in any systematic way. The chapters follow a similar format: presentation of the survey(s) and the sociolinguistic dimensions of the variety studied; description of the phonological inventory of the system(s), principal allophonic realizations, phonotactic constraints, behavior of schwa, behavior of liaison consonants, and other notable characteristics. The book opens with an informative introduction and closes with a chapter providing a synthesis of the major findings by continent.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Pour le public non-francophone qui s’intéresse à la variation du français parlé sur les trois continents couverts, le livre est assurément la meilleure source de renseignement. — Tobias Scheer, in Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, Vol. 109/2, 2014
By adopting a similar structure for all chapters, the authors have succeeded in presenting scores of data in a readily comprehensible way. Each major section features French as spoken in a monolingual (Europa), bilingual (North America) and multilingual (Africa) context; individually, each survey offers an unprecedented look into the phonological system of selected varieties of French. — Lionel Mathieu, University of Arizona, on Linguist List 24.2496 (June 2013)
Cette très belle somme, solide et vaste, laisse espérer des suites aussi fructueuses, afin de compléter un panorama si brillamment entamé. Elle semble inviter par ailleurs à de nouvelles collaborations. — Geneviève Henrot Sostero, in Publif@rum Carnets de Lecture 20, January 2014
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