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Sylvain Detey, Jacques Durand, Bernard Laks, and Chantal Lyche (eds), Varieties of Spoken French. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, xx + 572 pp. 978 0 19 957371 4 (hardcover)
The international Phonologie du français contemporain (PFC) project, created in 1999 by Jacques Durand, Bernard Laks, and Chantal Lyche, aims to document as many varieties of French as possible using a common research protocol that ensures that comparable speech samples are elicited. While the project originally focused on phonetic and phonological aspects of the various dialects spoken by native speakers, it has over time expanded to incorporate syntax, sociolinguistics, and second language speakers. The edited volume published by Detey et al. provides an excellent overview of the methodology developed by the team and numerous illustrations of the richness of the data elicited. It constitutes a timely and essential publication for any scholar interested in the diversity of French, whether based on location, speaker, or formality.
Part I of the volume (on a total of three) explains the objectives of the project, its different components, and the approaches developed to investigate the variation that characterizes the varieties analyzed by members of the...