Variation in the capital city of France

Abstract

Abstract This papers deals with the inherent variation in Parisian French, and its relation to ongoing phonetic change. The studied data come mainly from recordings with eight Parisian speakers—all in their 20s—of whom four are from the higher strata of society (haute bourgeoisie), and four from the middle class. Two young upper-working class speakers and two upper-class speakers in their 60s have been added to the analysis, in order to explore potentially social or diachronic divergences from the main speakers. The results show that Parisian speakers indeed exhibit variation, both according to class and age. Social variation is apparent for the palatalization of /k/ (almost exclusively used by middle- and working-class speakers), whereas all speakers seem to engage in the changes concerning schwa-tagging, loss of liaison after c’est, reductions in mid- and low oral vowels, and in nasal vowels. However, the haute-bourgeoisie speakers exhibit important delays for certain variables.

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