Acoustic characteristics of fricatives in Francoprovençal (Nendaz)

Francoprovençal (FP) is a highly fragmented, severely endangered, and under-documented language spoken in parts of France, Italy and Switzerland. FP spoken in the Swiss Canton of Valais has a relatively rich voiceless fricative inventory, which for some varieties includes /ɬ/. FP is therefore unusual amongst Romance languages given the presence of a phonemic lateral fricative, which is also typologically rare in the world’s languages. Moreover, voiceless lateral fricatives have been reported to display a wide range of variation in acoustic properties cross-linguistically. To date, there is very little synchronic work examining the details of both the phonology and phonetics of FP, and no published acoustic work at all on any aspect of FP’s sound system. This study provides the first acoustic investigation of one variety of FP spoken in the Valaisan commune of Nendaz, concentrating on a preliminary examination of the fricative system. We examine productions from four speakers whose data is part of a larger study into language variation and change in the region. We show that voiceless fricative categories are distinguished primarily through spectral centre-of-gravity and variance measures. Further evidence from a series of acoustic measures, including proportion of pre-voicing, relative intensity and zero-crossing ratios, suggest that /ɬ/ in FP sits between two poles: a prototypical lateral fricative and a prototypical lateral approximant. In this respect, the study’s findings corroborate observations made elsewhere, and not only contributes to the documentation and description of a lesser-studied language, but also our understanding of voiceless lateral fricative typology.