Laurentian French vowel laxing: an articulatory and acoustic study

Abstract In Laurentian French (LF), the high vowels /i y u/ are realized as lax [ɪ ʏ ʊ] in syllables closed by certain consonants. Previous work on vowel laxing has focused primarily on describing the environments in which it occurs and on providing an acoustic characterization of the process, with far less work considering laxing from an articulatory perspective. This study uses acoustic and articulatory data (via ultrasound tongue imaging) to answer two main research questions: (1) Do high vowels in laxing environments centralize and lower or just lower? and (2) Does laxing occur before the rhotic /ʁ/? For the first question, our results show that LF high vowels become both lower and more centralized when they are realized as lax. For the second, our results showed that all three vowels are produced farther back when they precede a rhotic, which could be an instance of C-to-V coarticulation, rather than laxing.