GLIDE INSERTION IN FRENCH HIATUS FOR ARABIC LEARNERS OF FRENCH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Arabic learners of French as a second language have been known to produce French hiatus sequences with an epenthetic glide between the two vowels such as in [pejaʒ] for “péage” and [nejɔ̃] for “neon”. This study attempts to investigate and document this phenomenon by looking at phonetic transcriptions of French words containing V-V sequences within and across word boundaries.  The first part of this exploratory study required Arabic learners to transcribe a series of isolated words using IPA to see if they would insert glides. In the second part, learners were invited to record short sentences containing V-V sequences within and across word boundaries to confirm their presence acoustically. Results show a clear tendency for most learners to insert a glide in the phonetic transcription of V1V2 sequences; [j] is inserted if V1 is front and [w] is added if V2 is back. Those glides are also present in recorded sentences as demonstrated in the brief acoustical analysis performed on complete sentences. The final section discusses the possibility that these epenthetic segments may be due to differences between the syllable structures of L1 (Arabic) and French.