Nasalization in Creole French

Abstract

This paper will attempt to show that a more satisfactory analysis of the phonological function and phonetic realization of nasalization in Creole French may be obtained if one departs from a view of phonological analysis anchored on the concept of the phoneme and if one adopts one in which the primary concerns are the indication of the choices available to the native speaker at any point in a sentence and the specification in the most economical way of the phonetic realization of sentences. The data examined here are drawn from Haitian Creole French (HO) but the solution proposed applies on the whole mutatis mutandis to all other Creole French dialects.