Variable deletion of French /l/: linguistic, social and stylistic factors

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers variable /l/-deletion in the French definite articles, subject clitic pronouns and in one frequent phono-lexical context, exemplified bytable‘table’ andronfle‘snore’. It reports the treatment of /l/ by a sample of secondary schoolchildren from Lorraine in north-eastern France. The definite articles and subject clitics are considered on the one hand in relation to the linguistic constraints which influence /l/-deletion, and on the other to the extra-linguistic variables of age, sex and speech style. Variable /l/-deletion in the phono-lexical context referred to above is examined principally in relation to the lexical input which influences /l/-deletion. Finally, we consider whether the sociolinguistic patterns reported here are indicative of linguistic change in progress, or whether the effects observed are revelatory rather of attitudes to non-standard linguistic forms inculcated in speakers by normative French pedagogy.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 31 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.