Autosegmental Representation of Epenthesis in the Spoken French of Ijebu Undergraduate French Learners in Selected Universities in South-West of Nigeria

Abstract

Insertion of vowels and consonants is a phonological process in language. Existing studies have examined vowel insertion in several languages and dialects with little attention paid to the spoken French of Ijebu Undergraduates. Therefore, this paper examined vowel insertion in the spoken French of 50 Ijebu Undergraduate French Learners (IUFLs) in Selected Universities in South West of Nigeria. The data collection for this study was through tape-recording of participants’ production of 30 sentences containing both French vowel and consonant sounds while Goldsmith’s Autosegmental phonology blended with distinctive feature theory was used to analyse instances of insertion in the data collected such as i-epenthetic and u-epenthetic at the initial, medial and final positions in the spoken French of IUFLs.

Keywords: IUFLs, Epenthensis, Ijebu dialect, Autosegmental phonology