Doctoral Dissertation Research: Structural differences between French and Picard: Evidence from phonetics and phonology

什么时候一种方言应该被认为是一种不同的语言？虽然法语和皮卡德语都是从拉丁语发展而来的，但法国的政治和语言统一导致皮卡德语的使用减少。今天，皮卡德语被联合国教科文组织列为“严重濒危”语言，其独立性存在很大的不确定性。在最坏的情况下，它被贴上了法语方言的标签，但最近的语言学分析揭示了皮卡德的重要结构差异和复杂性。本项目旨在扩大鼻音方面的证据。虽然这两种语言有着相同的鼻元音和口元音，但据报道，它们显示出相反的鼻音化模式，即，其中鼻气流在鼻辅音之前与元音重叠。一些语音学研究表明，这适用于法语中的高元音/i，y，u/，这在两种语言中都没有鼻音对应物。然而，关于这是否发生在显著的比率上，以及它是法语的语音语法的一部分还是一个小的语音反射，存在分歧。与此同时，Picard的一个主要参考语法报告说，这个过程只适用于/a，e，o/，它们在两种语言中都有鼻音对应。然而，与法国的研究相比，皮卡德没有语音数据来支持这些说法。考虑到法国政府可能会采取旨在提高其对当地语言的认可和支持的政策，以及普遍缺乏与法语最密切相关的语言的经验证据，拟议的研究既紧迫又非常及时。鼻声能量将被测量以记录哪些元音经历鼻化，以及在皮卡德标准法语中，和皮卡第的法国方言这个项目将不仅提供一个未充分研究的语言的语音分析，而且还对两个密切相关的语言进行比较分析。此外，本研究也可揭示鼻元音之间的结构关系。通过确定主要的语音差异，从低层次的语音现象，这项研究将有助于客观的标准，一个成熟的语言可以区分从方言，其方法很容易适应任何设置类似的工作是必要的。

When should a dialect be considered a different language? Though French and the Picard language both developed from Latin, the political and linguistic unification of France has led to a decline in the use of Picard. Today, Picard is classified as "severely endangered" by UNESCO, and considerable uncertainty has been expressed regarding its independence as a separate language. At worst, it is labeled a corrupted dialect of French, but recent linguistic analyses have revealed both important structural differences and complexities in Picard.This project aims to expand that body of evidence with respect to nasality. Though the two languages share identical inventories of nasal and oral vowels, they are reported to display opposite patterns of regressive nasalization, i.e., where nasal airflow overlaps with a vowel before nasal consonants. Several phonetic studies have shown that this applies to high vowels /i, y, u/ in French, which have no nasal counterpart in either language. However, there is disagreement about whether this occurs at significant rates, and whether it is part of the phonological grammar of French or a minor phonetic reflex. Meanwhile, a major reference grammar of Picard reports that this process applies only to /a, e, o/, which do have nasal counterparts in both languages. However, in contrast with the French studies, there are no phonetic data for Picard to support these claims. Given the possibility that the French government might adopt policies that aim to increase its recognition and support for its regional languages and the general lack of empirical evidence concerning the languages that are most closely related to French, the proposed research is both urgent and extremely timely.Nasal acoustic energy will be measured to document which vowels undergo nasalization, and to what extent, in Picard, Standard French, and the regional French of Picardie. This project will offer not only a phonological analysis of an understudied language, but also a comparative analysis of two closely related languages. In addition, this study may reveal insights concerning structural relations among nasal vowels. By determining major phonological differences from low-level phonetic phenomena, this study will contribute objective criteria by which a full-fledged language may be distinguished from a dialect, and its methodology is easily adapted to any setting where similar work is needed.