Chapter 10 Acquiring French

NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders

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Chapter 10Acquiring French

Andrea MacLeod


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Introduction

• This chapter covers– Overview of French speakers in the world– Description of the phonetics and phonology of French– Acquisition of French speech sounds from the

babbling stage to age 5 years– Comparison with the acquisition of English speech

sounds– Appraisal of research needs regarding speech sound

disorders in French-speaking children


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French Speakers in the World

• 220 million speakers of French as first language, for example– Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland)– North America (Canada, Haiti)– Africa (Algeria, Rwanda, Congo)

• Various dialects, e.g.,– Canadian French: affricates /t/ when preceding high

front vowels (“tu” is pronounced [tsy])– SLPs must distinguish between speech delays/disorders

and language differences


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Phonetics and Phonology of French


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• French has a relatively large phoneme inventory• Consonants that English does not have– Voiced velar fricative /ʁ/– Palatal nasal /ɲ/– Labial-palatal glide /ɥ/

• Vowel features that English does not have– Lip rounding for front vowels– Nasality


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Phonotactics• Range of syllable shapes

– V– C(0-3) + V + C(0-3)– C sequences between vowels can consist of up to four members– In C clusters, the sequence is limited to /s/ + obstruent + liquid + glide

• Phonotactic processes at word boundaries– Liaison: Silent word-final C becomes overt onset of the following word if it begins with a

vowel• “les” (“the”) /lɛ/ + “ânnes” (“donkeys”) /ɑn/ is pronounced /lɛ.zɑn

– Enchainement: Word-final C becomes onset of the following word if it begins with a vowel• “jeune arbre” (“young tree”) is pronounced /ʒœ.naʁ.bʁə/.

– Elision: Deletion of a vowel in the clitic when the clitic appears before a vowel-initial words• “le” + “arbre” (“the” + “tree”) is written “l’arbre” and pronounced [laʁ.bʁə]

– “Loi de position”: Process that favours the appearance of lax vowels in closed syllables and tense vowels in open syllables


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Prosody

• Lexical stress– The last syllable in a word tends to carry the lexical

stress– (Different from English, where most words have

the main lexical stress on the first syllable– Lexical stress in French and English is so salient

that even newborns respond to it


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Phonological Development in French

• What we know about the acquisition of French is based on– Longitudinal case studies (e.g., dos Santos, 2007;

Rose, 2000)– Diary studies (Demuth & Johnson, 2003), small group

studies (e.g., Hilaire-Debove & Kehoe, 2004, Kern & Davis, 2009; Vinter, 2001; Whalen, Levitt & Wang, 1991)

– Large group study (MacLeod, Sutton, Trudeau & Thordardottir, 2010)


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Babble Stage• French infants produced more rising intonations than

English infants (Whalen, Levitt & Wang, 1991) • Infants from various language backgrounds produced

vowels that resembled the adult vowels in their language (De Boysson-Bardies, Halle, Sagart & Durant, 1989); French infants produced diffuse vowel formants

• In a study reporting on Turkish, French, Romanian, Dutch, and Tunisian Arabic children observed that the French infants produced more nasals, more labial consonants, and more variegated babbling than the infants from the other languages (Kern et al., 2009)


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Toddlers (Age 2)

• More monosyllabic words than bisyllabic words in conversation (Vinter, 2001)—despite the observation than the inventory of early words consists of only 1/3 monosyllabic words

• Common error patterns were syllable simplification, substitutions, and assimilations (Vinter, 2001)

• Word-final consonants were produced more frequently in monosyllabic words than in bisyllabic words (Hilaire-Debove & Kehoe, 2004)


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Toddlers and Preschoolers

• Word-naming task, ages 20 – 53 months (MacLeod et al., 2010)

• Independent analysis– Age 20 – 23 months: /p, b, t, d, k, m, n, f, s, j/– By age 41 months: all consonants of French (although

not always in the correct target form)• Relational analysis:– Only /t, m, n, z/ mastered by age 36 months– Greatest change between 36 and 53 months,

mastering /p, b, d, k, g, ɲ, f, v, ʁ, l, w, ɥ/


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Comparing English and French

• Liquids– French: /l/ and /ʁ/ are mastered by 90% of children by

the age of 53 months– English: /l/ and /ɹ/ mastery extends to the age of 7 and

8 years, respectively (Smit et al., 1990)• Voicing– French: by 53 months for 90% of children– English: by 36 months for /b/, 42 months for /d/ and

48 months for /g/ by English speaking children (Smit et al., 1990)


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Speech Sound Disorders

• No published reports


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Connections

• The chapters in Section II of this volume describe speech acquisition for English

• Chapter 9 describes crosslinguistic trends• Chapters 11 and 12 show how children

acquire Brazilian Portuguese and Korean• Chapters 13 and 14 focus on the acquisition of

the speech sounds of two or more languages


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Concluding Remarks

• Research is needed for a fuller understanding of typical speech acquisition in French in children age 4 and older

• Research is also needed to explore speech sound disorder in depth

• Future research will provide an evidence base for French SLPs

Chapter 10 Acquiring French

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