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March 30 | Anne-José Villeneuve (University of Toronto)
Title "Language contact and bilingualism effects in Vimeu, France: the influence of
Picard on French"
Friday, 30 March, 3:00 PM
Ross Building S562
It is well known that regional languages – Breton, Flemish and Corsican among
others – are losing ground to French, due to lack of generational transmission
(Héran, Filhon & Deprez 2002). Among the Gallo-Romance languages of northern
France, traditionally referred to as langues d'oïl, Picard is no exception to
this trend.
Based on a recent corpus of French interviews collected in Vimeu, an area of
northwestern France where the Picard language still enjoys a relative vitality,
I demonstrate that linguistic features of Picard have seeped into French as it
is spoken in the area, by both Picard-French bilinguals and French
monolinguals. In this talk, I focus on two phonological variables: word-final
consonant cluster simplification in words like autre [ot] 'other', a feature
well-attested in most colloquial varieties of French and in Picard, and vowel
epenthesis (cf. 1-2), noted in Picardie (Emrik 1958, Lefebvre 1988).
A reception will be held after the lecture in the DLLL Lounge. All are
welcome. |
