Variation Patterns In Regressive Assimilation In Picard An Optimality Theoretic Account

Abstract

This paper offers an Optimality Theoretic account for the phonological process of Across-Word Regressive Assimilation (AWRA henceforth) in Vimeu Picard, a Gallo-Romance dialect spoken in the Picardie region in Northern France. In my investigation, I focus on one particular topic in the analysis of AWRA: the variation patterns observed in the application of AWRA; the analysis is couched within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993ab). The data come from Vasseur (1963) and Debrie’s (1981) articles on Picard, as well as from Auger's database consisting of a fieldwork sample of 2,783 tokens of variants of AWRA; the latter were collected following a three-level stylistic interview with nine speakers of Picard in five villages of Vimeu: Nibas, Feuquières, Fressenneville, Bienfay and Bouillancourt.

The investigation presents an account of variation using the tools of Optimality Theory (OT henceforth). Following the works of Reynolds (1994), Nagy and Reynolds (1997), Anttila (1997) and Taler (1997), the quantitative analysis that I present for AWRA in Picard provides support for the view that variation can be encoded in the grammar through variable ranking of constraints. In this way, my analysis uses tools from theoretical linguistics in the form of Optimality Theory and includes quantitative findings to provide an account of the non-categorical regularities found in the AWRA process in language use. This study is thus an attempt "to account for the broadest possible range of facts about language, including usage as well as abstract knowledge" (Guy 1997) within a single (competence) grammar (cf. Labov 1969 et al., Wardhaugh 1994, Guy 1997, among several other variationist linguists). In other words, the study attempts to incorporate into the grammar much more than what is usually referred to as such, i.e. aspects of the use of language.