Dynamics of vowel-to-vowel assimilation in French.

International audienceVowel-to-vowel assimilation in French is described as an anticipatory process affecting non-final mid vowels (V1) : [e], [E], [ø], [œ], [o], [O] that assimilate in height to the final tonic vowel (V2). The non-final mid vowel tend to be mid-high before a high or mid-high vowel (e. g. aimer [eme] 'to love'), and mid-low before a low or mid-low vowel (aimable [Emabl] 'kind')[1, 4, 6]. The present study investigates the nature of vowel harmony (VH) in French. Does vowel assimilation in French represent instances of a phonological assimilation or of other types of assimilatory change ? Are the effects of this process gradient, continuous and therefore more typical of coarticulatory effects than harmony ? On the basis of the collected experimental data, we conducted a systematic study of the acoustic patterns involved in this process, i.e., V1 formants (F1, F2, F3) acoustic properties and vowel durations