Markedness, Faithfulness, Vowel Quality and Syllable Structure in French
- The quality of vowels in French depends to a large extent on the kind of syllables they are in. Tense vowels are often in open syllables and lax vowels in closed ones. This generalization, which has been called loi de position in the literature, is often overridden by special vowel-consonant coocurrence restrictions obscuring the generalization. The paper shows first that the admission of semi-syllables in the phonology of French explains a large number of counterexamples. Many final closing consonants on the phonetic representation can be understood as onsets of following rhymeless syllables, opening in this way the last full syllable. Arguments coming from phonotactic regularities support this analysis. The second insight of the paper is that the Optimality Theory is a good framework to account for the intricate data bearing on the relationship between vowels and syllable structure. The loi de position is an effect dubbed Emergence of the Unmarked, instantiated only in case no higher-ranking constraint renders it inactive.
