The Acoustics of Borrowed /ɚ/ in Quebec French
Abstract
The English rhotic vowel /ɚ/ (as in soccer, /sɑkɚ/), characterized by a low third formant, is a cross-linguistically rare sound. Quebec French lacks such a phoneme, which poses a problem when borrowing words from English which contain it. Languages are known to employ a wide array of strategies in such cases, with varying degrees of acoustic fidelity to the original form. Quebec French is said to use three of these to adapt English /ɚ/: ignoring the pronunciation from the donor language and instead deducing one from the orthography (e.g., [sɔkɛʁ]), substituting the (phonetically or phonologically) closest native phoneme (usually rendered as [sɔkœʁ]), and importing the missing sound wholesale (i.e., [sɔkɚ]) (cf. Côté 2021). However, the acoustics of this loanword vowel have not yet been systematically studied. This paper constitutes a pilot study aimed at addressing this gap. The data consist of 317 tokens of the word Orford (a place name of English origin) across 26 speakers, taken from a corpus of parliamentary speech (an expanded version of Milne’s 2014 AssNat corpus). Static and dynamic formant measures for the vowel of interest are reported. In addition, overlap in F1 × F2 × F3 distributions with the acoustically similar native phonemes /ø, œ/ is calculated for each speaker using Pillai scores (cf. Hay et al. 2006, Nycz & Hall-Lew 2014). Preliminary results evidence a large measure of intra- and inter-speaker variability, particularly in terms of F3 (indicating variable success in replicating the rhoticity of the English phoneme). For most speakers, the loanword vowel remains distinct from either of the acoustically comparable native phonemes—even amongst those who exhibit similar F3 values as for /ø/ or /œ/—albeit with greater similarity to /ø/ than to /œ/. These findings paint a more complicated portrait of the variability in adaptation of /ɚ/ than earlier descriptions.Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Author Licensing Addendum
This Licensing Addendum ("Addendum") is entered into between the undersigned Author(s) and Canadian Acoustics journal published by the Canadian Acoustical Association (hereinafter referred to as the "Publisher"). The Author(s) and the Publisher agree as follows:
-
Retained Rights: The Author(s) retain(s) the following rights:
- The right to reproduce, distribute, and publicly display the Work on the Author's personal website or the website of the Author's institution.
- The right to use the Work in the Author's teaching activities and presentations.
- The right to include the Work in a compilation for the Author's personal use, not for sale.
-
Grant of License: The Author(s) grant(s) to the Publisher a worldwide exclusive license to publish, reproduce, distribute, and display the Work in Canadian Acoustics and any other formats and media deemed appropriate by the Publisher.
-
Attribution: The Publisher agrees to include proper attribution to the Author(s) in all publications and reproductions of the Work.
-
No Conflict: This Addendum is intended to be in harmony with, and not in conflict with, the terms and conditions of the original agreement entered into between the Author(s) and the Publisher.
-
Copyright Clause: Copyright on articles is held by the Author(s). The corresponding Author has the right to grant on behalf of all Authors and does grant on behalf of all Authors, a worldwide exclusive license to the Publisher and its licensees in perpetuity, in all forms, formats, and media (whether known now or created in the future), including but not limited to the rights to publish, reproduce, distribute, display, store, translate, create adaptations, reprints, include within collections, and create summaries, extracts, and/or abstracts of the Contribution.