Summary data to support Hall (2019), '(e) in Normandy: The sociolinguistics, phonology and phonetics of the "Loi de Position"'

Article abstract: This article uses the pronunciation of stressed Intonational Phrase-final /ε/ and /e/ in two communities in Normandy, France, to illustrate the convergence of two sociolinguistic processes on the same phonological result: increasing application of the <em>Loi de Position</em>. In both communities (one rural and further from Paris, one urban and closer to Paris), there is now no consistent community-wide phonetic distinction between the two phonemes in that environment. It is suggested that the <em>Loi de Position</em> is already widely applied in the rural site, but speakers are still conscious of the formal norm whereby it is not applied; for the urban site, apparent-time changes for this variable reflect changes in Parisian speech. The theoretical implications of the study concerning speakers’ organisation of their vowel-space, and concerning the increasing application of the <em>Loi de Position</em> in the French of France, are examined. These conclusions are reached by per-speaker analysis of F1 and F2 separately from each other (rare in French linguistics). As a measure of community cohesion, the article introduces to linguistics the coefficient of variation (more common in biology and medicine).