Allophonic Variation of /ε / and Its Morphologization in an Acadian Dialect of Nova Scotia

The realization of /ε/ as [a] in certain contexts is attested not only in varieties of Canadian French but also in certain regional varieties of Metropolitan French. In the Franco-Acadian dialect here studied the distribution of the more open allophone shows only partial overlap with that described for other varieties of Canadian French, and in some other respects coincides with data cited elsewhere for the western and/or central regions of France. Most significant for the dialectologist perhaps is the morphologization of the phonetic feature in the flexions of the imperfect indicative. From the point of view of the phonetician, distributional "idiosyncracies," particularly the behaviour of the vowel phoneme before the /r/ phoneme, which contradicts the findings of other dialect studies cited, underline the role that surface features may play in linguistic evolution independent of the underlying structure. Finally, instrumental analysis of the formant structure of open allophones supports the separation of the + open allophone into four perceptually discrete variants that have, however, no absolute correlative distribution, and therefore no confirmed individual linguistic identity.