Pathways to depalatalization of the palatal nasal in Quebec and hexagonal French: An EPG study

Abstract

The palatal nasal is one of French’s most variable consonants with attested variants including [ɲ] alongside [nj] and, less frequently, [n] and [ŋ]. Variation is conditioned by both linguistic (position in the word, lexical item, flanking vowels) and speaker variables (in particular, variety). Except for insights provided by the studies reviewed in Recasens (2013), little is known of the articulatory properties of French /ɲ/ including the degree of inter-varietal and -speaker variation or the proportion of coronal and velar depalatalized realizations. We present here an electropalatographic (EPG) study of two European (EF) and two Quebec French (QF) speakers’ /ɲ/ production in both word-medial and -final positions in isolated and contextualized words. Quantitative indices and qualitative investigation of the linguopalatal contact profiles reveal that the EF speakers produced a relatively anterior /ɲ/, differing minimally from /n/ followed by /j/. Whereas one of their QF peers produced uniquely backed velar realizations of /ɲ/, the other speaker had fronted alveolopalatal variants word-medially versus backed velar realizations word-finally, with the latter differing minimally from the /ŋ/ of jogging. These findings are consistent with pathways to depalatalization observed in other Romance varieties and call into question the phonemic status of the palatal nasal in French.