Merging low vowels in metropolitan French

Abstract

ABSTRACTPrescriptive pronunciation manuals of French generally present a vocalic inventory with two low vowels: front [a] and back [ɑ]. At the same time, descriptive overviews of modern French note the tendency of the posterior vowel to merge with the anterior token, especially in unstressed position. The actual spread and conditioning factors of this alleged merger are nevertheless unknown: we are ignorant about the degree of neutralization, and it is not clear whether it is a change affecting all regions and generations in France.This article studies the French low vowels from a sociolinguistic perspective, by analyzing metropolitan French corpus data.