Naomi Nagy

Acquisition of phonology in L2
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Many studies have examined the variable nature of phonological rules in Montreal French (Clermont & Cedergren 1979, Laliberte 1974, Poplack & Walker 1986, Pupier & Legare 1973, Sankoff & Cedergren 1971, Santerre et al. 1977, Vinay 1950, inter alia). It has been noted that some of the variables are socially evaluated, while others exhibit variation which does not have strong social correlates. /l/-deletion is correlated to social class, sex, and speech style, while /r/ variation is age-correlated, as the reflection in apparent time of a change in progress: the replacement of the traditional Montreal French alveolar (r) by the dorsal (r) characteristic of both eastern Quebec and of the international standard. The third feature we examine, /t,d/-affrication, is categorical in L1 French.

In order to compare L1 patterns to L2 patterns, we have drawn our data from a corpus of 20 interviews with Anglophone Montrealers, aged 18-33. The speakers vary according to mode of acquisition of L2: in a French school, in an English school with or without an immersion program, or outside the school. The speakers also vary according to type of exposure to L2, i.e., personal network, school, workplace, or neighborhood.

Our central hypothesis is that both the method of L2 acquisition and age of exposure to L2 influence the distribution of the Montreal vernacular features. Preliminary results support this hypothesis: it is only the speakers who regularly use French outside of the school whose patterns approach those of native speakers.

In addition to data taken from the corpus, we conducted tests in which we asked 140 native French speakers to listen to a number of excerpts from the L2 interviews and to express their subjective reactions in a multiple choice questionnaire. These data allow us to explore the relationship between use of the Quebecois variants and social evaluation of the speakers. We compare our results to those of Govaert-Gauthier (1979) who showed that L1 speakers who use more Quebecois features are less positively evaluated.

References

• Clermont, Jean & Henrietta Cedergren. (1979) Les "R" de ma mère sont perdus dans l'air. Le français parlé, ed. by Pierrette Thibault. Carbondale & Edmonton: Linguistic Research, Inc., pp. 13-28.
• Govaert-Gauthier, Suzanne. (1979) Attitudes de vingt-huit Montréalais francophones sur le français parlé au Québec.Le francais parlé, ed. by Pierrette Thibault. Carbondale & Edmonton: Linguistic Research, Inc., pp. 145-152.
• Laliberté, T. (1974) L'élision du "l" en français quebecois. Lingua 33:115-122.
• Poplack, Shana & D. Walker. Going through (l) in Candian French, in Diversity and Diachrony, ed. by D. Sankoff, 1986. Philadelphia: Benjamins.
• Pupier, Paul & L. Légaré. (1973) L'effacement du /l/ dans les articles definis et les clitiques en français de Montréal. Glossa 7:63-80.
• Sankoff, Gillian & Henrietta Cedergren. (1971) Les contraintes linguistiques et sociales de l'elision du l chez les montréalais. Proceedings of the XIII International Congress of Linguistics and Philology, ed. by M. Boudreault & F. Moehren. Quebec: Presses de l'Université Laval. 1101-1116.
• Santerre, L. (1978) Les variphones du "R" dans le francais parlé de Montréal. Communication presentée au Congrès de l'Association Canadienne de Linguistique à Waterloo.
• Santerre, L., D. Noiseaux, & L. Ostiguy. (1977) La chute du /l/ dans les articles et les pronoms clitiques en français quebecois. The Fourth LACUS Forum, 1977:530-538.
• Tousignant, Claude. and David Sankoff. Aspects de la competence productive et receptive: la liaison à Montreal. Le français parlé, ed. by Pierrette Thibault. Carbondale & Edmonton: Linguistic Research, Inc., pp. 41-52.
• Vinay, J.-P. (1950) Bout de langue ou fond de la gorge? French Review 23.6:489-98.