Varieties of Spoken French

This book examines the variation found in modern spoken French, based on the research programme 'Phonology of Contemporary French' (Phonologie du Francais Contemporain, PFC). Extensive data are drawn from all over the French-speaking world, including Algeria, Canada, Louisiana, Mauritius, and Switzerland. Although the principal focus is on differences in pronunciation, the authors also analyse the spoken language at all levels from sound to meaning. The book is accompanied by a website hosting audio-visual material for teaching purposes, data, and a variety of tools for working with corpora.

The first part of the book outlines some key concepts and approaches to the description of spoken French. Chapters in Part II are devoted to the study of individual samples of spoken French from all over the world, covering phonological and grammatical features as well as lexical and cultural aspects. The book's companion website provides a class-friendly ready-to-use multimedia version of these 17 chapters, as well as the sound files and full transcription for each extract. Part III looks at inter and intra-speaker variation: it begins with chapters that provide the methodological background to the study of phonological variation using databases, while in the second section authors present case studies of a number of PFC survey points, including Paris, the Central African Republic, and Quebec. Varieties of Spoken French will be an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, and students of all aspects of French language and linguistics.

Sylvain Detey, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and French Studies, Waseda University,Jacques Durand, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, University of Toulouse Jean Jaures,Bernard Laks, Professor of Linguistics, University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense,Chantal Lyche, Professor of French Linguistics, University of Oslo

Sylvain Detey is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and French Studies at Waseda University, and was formerly Maitre de Conferences at the University of Rouen. His current research interests lie in the use of oral corpora for language education and the role of variation and multimodality in second language phonology acquisition. He is one of the coordinators of the research project Phonology of Contemporary French (Phonologie du Francais Contemporain, PFC) and co-editor of Les varietes du francais parle dans l'espace francophone. Ressources pour l'enseignement (2010).


Jacques Durand is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toulouse - Jean Jaures and an Emeritus Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His extensive publications are mainly in phonology (general and as applied to English and French). He is the co-founder of the PFC research project, editor of the OUP series 'The Phonology of the World's Languages' and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Corpus Phonology (OUP 2014).


Bernard Laks is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Defense (Research Laboratory MoDyCo UMR 7114) and a Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Until 2012, he was Vice President (Research) of that university and formerly a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). His research and extensive publications mainly address phonology, formal and cognitive linguistics, the history of linguistics, and cognitive sciences. Since 2000 he has been co-director of the PFC research project.


Chantal Lyche is Professor of French Linguistics at the University of Oslo. She has published widely on French phonology and is the co-founder of the PFC research project. Her research has focused most recently on varieties of French spoken outside France, particularly in Switzerland, Louisiana, Mauritius, and Africa. She is the co-author of a standard textbook on the phonology of French and is actively involved in the teaching of French as a foreign language.

List of contributors
Map of survey points
Part I: Variation in Spoken French: Concepts and Approaches
1. The PFC programme and its methodological framework, Sylvain Detey, Jacques Durand, Bernard Laks, and Chantal Lyche
2. Variation and corpora: Concepts and methods, Jacques Durand, Bernard Laks, and Chantal Lyche
3. A framework for the pedagogical use of a corpus of spoken French, Sylvain Detey and Chantal Lyche
4. The notion of norm in spoken French: Production and perception, Sylvain Detey, Chantal Lyche, Isabelle Racine, Sandra Schwab, and David Le Gac
5. Prosodic characteristics of Reference French, Corine Astesano
6. Syntactic variation in spoken French, Nathalie Rossi-Gensane
7. Beyond orality: Visual modality and interaction, Lorenza Mondada and Veronique Traverso
Part II: The French-Speaking World: Extracts and Analyses
8. French in Paris (Ile-de-France): A speaker from the XIVth arrondissment, Anita Berit Hansen
9. French in Bas-Rhin (Alsace): A speaker from Strasbourg, Dominique Nouveau and Martin Riegel
10. French in Nord (Nord-Pas de Calais): A speaker from La Madeleine, Alain Dawson, Cyril Auran, Caroline Bouzon, Laurence Delrue, Rudy Loock, Kathleen M. O'Connor, and Cedric Patin
11. French in Orne (Basse-Normandie): A speaker from Domfront, Laurie Buscail and Chantal Lyche
12. French in Auvergne (Centre): A speaker from Clermont-Ferrand, Damien Chabanal, Jacques Durand, and Corinne Ratier
13. French in Haute-Garonne (Midi-Pyrenees): A speaker from Toulouse, Lea Courdes-Murphy, Jacques Durand, Corinne Ratier, and Nathalie Rossi-Gensane
14. French in Haute-Savoie (Rhone-Alpes): A speaker from Passy, Elissa Pustka and Martin Vordermayer
15. French in Alpes-Maritimes (Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur): A speaker from Nice, Claudine Pagliano, Astrid Nome, and Lea Courdes-Murphy
16. French in Belgium: A speaker from Henri-Chapelle, Philippe Hambye, Anne Catherine Simon, and Alice Bardiaux
17. French in Switzerland: A speaker from Neuchatel, Isabelle Racine, Helene N. Andreassen, and Laurence Benetti
18. French in the Central African Republic: A speaker from Bangui, Guri Bordal, Beatrice Akissi Boutin, and Robert Beyom
19. French in Algeria: A speaker from Chlef, Sarah Leroy
20. French in Mauritius: A speaker from Quatre-Bornes, Gudrun Ledegen and Chantal Lyche
21. French in Quebec: A speaker from Montreal, Marie-Helene Cote
22. French in Alberta: A speaker from Riviere-la-Paix, Douglas C. Walker and Rejean Canac-Marquis
23. French in Ontario: A speaker from Hearst, Jeff Tennant and Francois Poire
24. French in Louisiana: A speaker from Ville Platte, Nathalie Dajko
25. French in interaction: A multimodal study of a meeting in Paris, Lorenza Mondada and Veronique Traverso
Part III: Aspects of Inter- and Intra-Speaker Variation
26. Approaching variation in PFC: The segmental level, Noel Nguyen
27. Approaching variation in PFC: The schwa level, Chantal Lyche
28. Approaching variation in PFC: The liaison level, Jacques Durand and Chantal Lyche
29. Approaching variation in PFC: The prosodic level, Anne Catherine Simon and Anne Lacheret
30. Approaching variation in PFC: The tools, Julien Eychenne, Sylvain Navarro, Atanas Tchobanov, and Jan-Willem van Leussen
31. Variation in the capital city of France: Paris, Anita Berit Hansen and Kathrine Asla Ostby
32. Variation in a rural village in southern France: Douzens, Jacques Durand and Jean-Michel Tarrier
33. Variation in Switzerland: The behaviour of schwa in Martigny, Neuchatel and Nyon, Helene N. Andreassen and Isabelle Racine
34. Variation in the Central African Republic : Stable and variable phonological features in a multilingual speaker's idiolect, Guri Bordal and Beatrice Akissi Boutin
35. Variation in Canada: Trois-Rivieres in Quebec, Marie-Helene Cote
36. Variation in Canada: Effects of language contact in rural francophone Alberta, Rejean Canac-Marquis and Douglas C. Walker
37. Variation in Louisiana: Prairie Cajuns and Bayou Cajuns, Nathalie Dajko and Darcie Blainey
38. Variation among non-native speakers: The InterPhonology of Contemporary French, Sylvain Detey, Isabelle Racine, Yuji Kawaguchi, and Francoise Zay
Appendix I: How to use the companion website, Atanas Tchobanov and Kjetil Ra Hauge
Appendix II: PFC text and word-list
Contents of the Companion Website
A. Audio-visual illustrations
1. Prosody of Reference French (audio for Chapter 5)
2. A meeting in Paris (audio-visual for Chapter 25)
3. Non-native productions (audio for Chapter 38)
B. Multimedia versions of the Chapters in Part II
C. Printable PDF versions of the transcriptions of the conversations in Part II
D. Corpus-working tools and applications
1. Praat within the PFC project: First steps, Sylvain Navarro and Jan-Willem van Leussen
2. Introduction to the acoustic analysis of PFC data and scripting with Praat, Jan-Willem van Leussen
3. Analysing transcribed speech with Dolmen, Julien Eychenne and Roberto Paternostro
E. Database
1. Audio and textgrid files for Part II
2. Audio and textgrid files for Part III