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的统一导致了皮卡德语的使用减少。今天，皮卡德语被教科文组织列为“严重濒危”语言，对于其作为一种独立语言的独立性表示了相当大的不确定性。在最坏的情况下，它被贴上了法语的腐败方言的标签，但最近的语言分析揭示了Picard中重要的结构差异和复杂性。这个项目旨在扩大关于鼻音的证据。尽管这两种语言拥有相同的鼻音和口语元音清单，但据报道，它们表现出相反的倒置鼻化模式，即鼻腔气流与鼻辅音前的元音重叠。一些语音研究表明，这适用于法语中的高元音/i，y，u/，它们在这两种语言中都没有鼻音对应的发音。然而，对于这种情况是否以显著的速度发生，以及它是法语语音语法的一部分还是轻微的语音反射，人们存在分歧。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/，这些词在两种语言中都有对应的鼻音。然而，与法语研究相反，皮卡德没有语音数据来支持这些说法。鉴于法国政府可能会采取旨在增加对其地区语言的认可和支持的政策，以及普遍缺乏关于与法语关系最密切的语言的实证证据，拟议中的研究既紧迫又极其及时。将测量鼻声能，以记录哪些元音在皮卡德、标准法语和皮卡迪地区法语中鼻化，以及在多大程度上鼻化。这个项目不仅将提供对一种未被研究的语言的音系学分析，还将对两种密切相关的语言进行比较分析。此外，这项研究还可以揭示鼻元音之间的结构关系。通过从低级语音现象中确定主要的语音差异，这项研究将为区分一种成熟的语言和一种方言提供客观标准，其方法很容易适应任何需要类似工作的环境。

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.