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

什么时候方言应该被视为不同的语言？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。如今，皮卡德语被联合国教科文组织列为“严重濒危”语言，其作为一门独立语言的独立性也存在相当大的不确定性。最糟糕的是，它被贴上了一种腐败的法语方言的标签，但最近的语言学分析揭示了皮卡德语的重要结构差异和复杂性。这个项目的目的是扩大关于鼻炎的证据。虽然这两种语言有相同的鼻音和口音，但据报道，它们表现出相反的鼻音化模式，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/，它们在两种语言中都没有鼻音对应。然而，对于这种情况是否显著发生，以及它是法语语音语法的一部分还是一种次要的语音反射，人们存在分歧。同时，皮卡德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鼻音对应。然而，与法国的研究相反，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地区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。将测量鼻声能，以记录皮卡德语、标准法语和皮卡第地区法语中哪些元音被鼻化，以及在多大程度上被鼻化。这个项目不仅会对一种未被充分研究的语言进行音韵分析，还会对两种密切相关的语言进行比较分析。此外，本研究可能揭示鼻音元音之间的结构关系。通过从低级语音现象中确定主要语音差异，本研究将提供客观标准，通过该标准可以区分成熟的语言和方言，并且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.