Distinctive features in French

Reference for the courses LNG-2000 and LNG-3100

Here are the features used for French in our courses. They are based on the book The sound pattern of English, by Chomsky and Halle (1968). Please note that the choices of specific feature values may depend on the analysis and on the language investigated. In fact, the actual value of some features (place of articulation) may be absent, since these features are often used in a privative manner: [cor], [lab], [dor] instead of [±cor], [±lab], [±dor]. The tables below use binary values across the board, following Hayes (2009).

As mentioned in class, there are variations in how we assign values to features: the vowel /ɑ/, for example, is sometimes considered as [+tendu] (Côté 2005), as [0tendu] (Hayes 2009), or as [−tendu] (Durand and Lyche 2001) (!). In our courses, we consider it as [−tendu]. In effect, the value of [tendu] of the vowel in question won’t be important in our minimal matrices, since there’s just one low back vowel in French. The tables below (in French) represent the phonemes in French used in the courses LNG-2000 and LNG-3100.

Consonants

Vowels

References

Chomsky, N., and M. Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.

Côté, Marie-Hélène. 2005. “Phonologie Française.”

Durand, Jacques, and Chantal Lyche. 2001. “Des règles Aux Contraintes En Phonologie générative.” Revue Québécoise de Linguistique 30 (1): 91–154.

Hayes, Bruce. 2009. Introductory Phonology. Malden, MA,; Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.