http://hdl.handle.net/2160/4608 2013-06-19T04:43:38Z http://hdl.handle.net/2160/4609 Aspects of sociophonetic variability in French consonants Temple, Rosalind A. M. This thesis is an exploration of contrasts and inter-relationships between theoretical phonology and experimental phonetics on the one hand, and variationist approaches to the analysis of language on the other, with particular reference to the voicing contrast in French obstruents. Chapter 1 introduces the study. Chapter 2 examines the modelling of variation at different phonological and phonetic levels and considers the merits and shortcomings of these. Chapter 3 examines the reverse of that coin, that is the way variationists approach the phonetics of variation. Chapter 4 explores aspects of the general phonology and phonetics of the voicing contrast and the various factors which may contribute to variation in its realisation, while Chapter 5 presents a brief survey of the background to the contrast in French with particular reference to historical and more recent evidence for variability. In Chapter 6, I consider methodological contrasts between the two paradigms and present the methodological background to the empirical studies reported in later Chapters. Chapter 7 consists of a study of stop data from the Atlas linguistique de la France, while Chapters 8 and 9 analyse a contemporary corpus in order to find evidence of the different sorts of constraints that could govern variability in the production of voicing. I conclude in the brief 10th chapter that the only satisfactory approaches to studying the coarse- and fine-grained phonetic variability which is characteristic of real speech, is to combine complementary approaches from the two paradigms. 1998-01-01T00:00:00Z