Minimalism and French /ʀ/: Phonological representations in phonetically based phonology

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the phonological structure of French rhotics and their treatment in a production grammar. Assuming emergent featural specification, it is argued that the underlying representation of /ʀ/ contains only values for sonorance, continuance and place of articulation. Grammatical analysis is undertaken in an Optimality Theoretic framework, where evaluation highlights the effect of effort reduction and perceptual augmentation on /ʀ/, also demonstrating that more richly specified segments are unaffected by these constraints. The proposal is shown to be compatible with antecedent analyses and data from regional forms and registers.