Vowel harmony in Montreal French (II)

In examining the systematic coarticulatory influence of a vowel on the vowel which precedes it, these hypotheses have been tested: (1) harmonic coarticulation can, for this language system, move only in one direction/in either direction; (2) harmonic coarticulation is a systematic phonemic/systematic phonetic phenomenon. The difference is visible when phonetic realization of phonological units overlaps a great deal. In this case either vowels vary in accordance with the mean F₂ of the phonological unit which succeeds them, or in direct relation as the F₂ of a following vowel varies (independently of whether this variation accords with phonological boundaries) the F₂ of the preceding vowel will vary. We hope to show that the coarticulatory influence of one vowel on the next is unidirectional and that it is a phonetic coarticulatory influence. The data consists of conversational‐style interviews made by the Sankoff‐Cedergren Project in Montreal. Contrasts will be made between the patterns displayed by Montreal vernacular speakers and the pattern of the most conservative speaker in the corpus.