• 1.
• Chapter 1. Introduction to phonological variation in French: Illustrations from three continents (by Gess, Randall)--
• 2. Part I. Africa--
• 3.
• Chapter 2. A phonological study of French spoken by multilingual speakers from Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (by Bordal, Guri)--
• 4.
• Chapter 3. French in Senegal after three centuries: A phonological study of Wolof speakers' French (by Boutin, Beatrice Akissi)--
• 5.
• Chapter 4. The phonological characteristics of French in Bamako, Mali: A sociolinguistic approach (by Lyche, Chantal)--
• 6. Part II. Europe--
• 7.
• Chapter 5. An overview of the phonological and phonetic properties of Southern French: Data from two Marseille surveys (by Coquillon, Annelise)--
• 8. Chapter 6.The variation of pronunciation in Belgian French: From segmental phonology to prosody (by Hambye, Philippe)--
• 9.
• Chapter 7. A study of young Parisian speech: Some trends in pronunciation (by Hansen, Anita Berit)--
• 10.
• Chapter 8. A phonological study of a Swiss French variety: Data from the canton of Neuchatel (by Racine, Isabelle)--
• 11. Part III. North America--
• 12.
• Chapter 9. An overview of the phonetics and phonology of Acadian French spoken in northeastern New Brunswick (Canada) (by Cichocki, Wladyslaw)--
• 13.
• Chapter 10. Laurentian French (Quebec): Extra vowels, missing schwas and surprising liaison consonants (by Cote, Marie-Helene)--
• 14.
• Chapter 11. "Cajun" French in a non-Acadian community: A phonological study of the French of Ville Platte, Louisiana (by Klingler, Thomas A.)--
• 15.
• Chapter 12. Laurentian French phonology in a majority setting outside Quebec: Observations from the PFC Hearst Ontario Study (by Tennant, Jeff)--
• 16.
• Chapter 13. Albertan French phonology: French in an anglophone context (by Walker, Douglas C.)--
• 17.
• Chapter 14. Phonological variation in French: Unity and diversity across continents (by Lyche, Chantal)--
• 18. Varieties and geographical names--
• 19. Subjects and key notions.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This volume presents a selection of French varieties representing the great diversity of this language along geographical, social, and stylistic dimensions. Twelve illustrations from regions as far removed as Western Canada and Central Africa represent widely divergent social contexts of language use. Each chapter is based on original surveys conducted within the framework of the Phonology of Contemporary French project, described in the Introduction. These surveys constitute an invaluable source of new data for researchers, as many of the varieties included are otherwise undocumented in any systematic way. The chapters follow a similar format: presentation of the survey(s) and the sociolinguistic dimensions of the variety studied; description of the phonological inventory of the system(s), principal allophonic realizations, phonotactic constraints, behavior of schwa, behavior of liaison consonants, and other notable characteristics. The book opens with an informative introduction and closes with a chapter providing a synthesis of the major findings by continent.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. Foreword (by Gess, Randall)--
• 2. Introduction: From Romance Philology to (Historical) Romance Linguistics? (by Klausenburger, Jurgen)--
• 3. Part I: Phonology--
• 4. Systemic Contrast and the Diachrony of Spanish Sibilant Voicing (by Bradley, Travis G.)--
• 5. The Myth of Phonologically Distinctive Vowel Length in Renaissance French (by Gess, Randall)--
• 6. Glide Strengthening in French and Spanish and the Formal Representation of Affricates (by Jacobs, Haike)--
• 7. Rhythm and Prosodic Change (by Mazzola, Michael L.)--
• 8. Contrast Preservation Theory and Historical Change (by Montreuil, Jean-Pierre Y.)--
• 9. On the Phonetics of Rhymes in Classical and Pre-Classical French: A Sociolinguistic Perspective (by Morin, Yves-Charles)--
• 10. Is the 'Word' Still a Phonological Unit in French? Evidence from Verlan (by Walker, Douglas C.)--
• 11. Part II: Morphology--
• 12. Proclisis and Enclisis of Object Pronouns at the Turn of the 17th Century: The Speech of the Future Louis XIIIth (by Hirschbuhler, Paul)--
• 13. The Emergence of Marked Structures in the Integration of Loans in Italian (by Repetti, Lori)--
• 14. On the Life and (Near) Death of a Morphophoneme (by Winters, Margaret E.)--
• 15. German Influence in Romanian (by Zwanenburg, Wiecher)--
• 16. Part III: Syntax--
• 17. Il Etait une Fois: Diachronic Development of Expletives, Case, and Agreement from Latin to Modern French (by Arteaga, Deborah)--
• 18. 'Synthetic' vs. 'Analytic' in Romance: The Importance of Varieties (by Bauer, Brigitte L.M.)--
• 19. Intra-System Variability and Change in Nominal and Verbal Morphology (by Bullock, Barbara E.)--
• 20. Aspects of Infinitival Constructions in the History of Portuguese (by Martins, Ana Maria)--
• 21. Morphosyntactic Functions of Italian Reflexive si: A GrammaticalizationAnalysis (by Russi, Cinzia)--
• 22. From Adverb to Discourse Marker and Beyond: The Status of la inFranco-American French (by Smith, Jane S.)--
• 23. General Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This volume contains 17 studies on historical Romance linguistics within a variety of current theoretical frameworks; it includes studies on phonology, morphology and syntax, focusing solely or comparatively on all five `major' Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. An introduction by the eminent Romance Linguist Jurgen Klausenburger addresses the fit of these studies in the overall development of the field of historical Romance linguistics since the 19th century. The studies in this volume demonstrate an organic link between Malkiel's (1961) `classic' definition of Romance linguistics and the field of Romance linguistics today, because just as scholars of the field in the 19th century successfully applied the dominant paradigm of (historical) linguistics of their time, Neogrammarian theory, so do the authors contained in the present volume avail themselves of current linguistic advances to achieve equally significant results.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)