Lowering of high vowels by French immersion students in Canada

• Author / Creator

  Vickerman, Alison

• While much research has been dedicated to studying the speech of French
  immersion students, relatively little is known about their sociolinguistic
  competence, particularly in the area of phonetics. This study aims to determine
  the extent to which a group of French immersion students in Ontario, Canada
  display the native Canadian French phenomenon of lowering the high vowel /i/
  to its lax allophone /ɪ/ in the obligatory context of a stressed syllable closed by
  any consonant other than /v, z, ʒ/ or /ʀ/. Results indicate that the majority of the
  students do not employ the lax vowel, and those students who demonstrate some
  degree of vowel lowering apply the rule inconsistently. No strong correlation
  between social or linguistic factors is apparent in the application of the rule,
  suggesting that more explicit teaching of this phenomenon is necessary in order
  to make students aware of these kinds of native Canadian French speaker
  variations.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Second language acquisition
  • Phonetics
  • High vowels
  • French
  • Linguistics

• Graduation date

  Spring 2010

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3504X

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.