Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2013 Un cadjin qui dzit bon dieu! : assibilation and affrication in three generations of Cajun male speakers Aaron Emmitte Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Emmitte, Aaron, "Un cadjin qui dzit bon dieu! : assibilation and affrication in three generations of Cajun male speakers" (2013). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2513. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2513 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. UN CADJIN QUI DZIT CHER BON DIEU!: ASSIBILATION AND AFFRICATION IN THREE GENERATIONS OF CAJUN MALE SPEAKERS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of French Studies by Aaron Emmitte B.A., Texas Christian University, 2006 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2009 August 2013 © Copyright 2013 Aaron Emmitte All rights reserved ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank my advisor, Sylvie Dubois, who has constantly supported me over the past seven years. Without her help and direction, I could not have completed this dissertation. She has always been so generous with her time and advice, and I am truly grateful to her for everything that she has done for me over the years. I would also like to thank my committee members: Janna Oetting, John Protevi, and Rafael Orozco, as well as my Dean’s Representative: Jon Cogburn, for their involvement and guidance in my dissertation and my overall education at LSU. I greatly appreciate their cooperation with my timing throughout the entire dissertation process. Writing this dissertation has been a long, sometimes stressful process, and so I must also thank the entire Department of French Studies, whose faculty and graduate students were constant sources of support. I would like to thank the department’s chair, Greg Stone, in particular. I am also eternally grateful to Cathy Luquette. You showed me what it is to be a great teacher, and the year that I spent as your assistant was one of the best of my academic career. Thank you to Amanda LaFleur and Earlene Broussard as well for letting me play a small role in the Cajun program. To my dear friends Andy, Carrie, Carey, Frankie, Katy, Melanie, Rosie, and Ryan: thank you for your love and support. You have made Baton Rouge not just a place where I went to school but, more importantly, a home. Many thanks also to Sarah. Even though you’re far away, you’ve always been there for me and listened tirelessly when I needed someone. I would also like to thank the entire Rivière family. You welcomed me into your homes and showed me nothing but the utmost hospitality. Y’all have made this an amazing past seven years! iii Lastly and most importantly, I want to thank my family. Y’all have always encouraged me to follow my passions my entire life, and I cannot imagine where I would be without your love and support. Thank y’all for always being there and asking me when I was going to finish. This dreaded question was perhaps my strongest motivation to finish! iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... ix ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................x INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. SOCIOHISTORY OF ACADIANS AND CAJUNS ............................................10 1.1 History and Colonization of Louisiana and Acadia ...........................................................11 1.2 Le Grand Dérangement ......................................................................................................15 1.3 Settlement of Louisiana and Emergence of the ‘Cajuns’ ...................................................17 1.4 Varieties of French in Louisiana ........................................................................................25 1.5 The Four Parishes of my Study ..........................................................................................29 1.6 Linguistic Studies of Cajun French ....................................................................................35 1.7 Cajun French Today ...........................................................................................................40 CHAPTER 2. LANGUAGE SHIFT AND GENDER ..................................................................43 2.1 Language Shift ...................................................................................................................44 2.2 Studies of Gender ...............................................................................................................50 2.3 Hypothesis ..........................................................................................................................58 CHAPTER 3. CADZIEN OU CADJIN? ......................................................................................61 3.1 Linguistic Approaches to Assibilation and Affrication ......................................................61 3.2 Assibilation in French ........................................................................................................67 3.2.1 Assibilation as a Marker of Dialect ..............................................................................67 3.2.2 Origin(s) of Assibilation in French ..............................................................................74 3.3 Affrication in French ...........................................................................................................79 3.3.1 Affrication as a Market of Dialect ................................................................................79 3.3.2 Cadien, Cadzien, or Cadjin? The Answer… ................................................................85 CHAPTER 4. METHODOLOGY AND DISTRIBUTION OF DATA .......................................87 4.1 The Dubois Cajun French Corpus ......................................................................................87 4.2 My Subsample of Cajun Male Speakers ............................................................................90 4.3 The Coding Process ............................................................................................................93 4.4 Distribution of Three Variants in Cajun French .................................................................96 4.5 Discussion of Three Variants According to Linguistic Factors .........................................97 4.5.1 Phonemic Context as a Linguistic Factor ......................................................................98 4.5.2 Syllable Position as a Linguistic Factor ........................................................................99 4.6 Variant Distribution in Lafourche and Vermilion .............................................................101 v 4.7 Affrication of ‘Cadien’ as a Lexical Item ........................................................................105 CHAPTER 5. VARIATION IN AVOYELLES AND ST. LANDRY .......................................108 5.1 Variant Distribution in Avoyelles and St. Landry ............................................................109 5.2 Quantitative Analysis of the Occlusive ............................................................................110 5.3 Quantitative Analysis of Assibilation ...............................................................................113 5.4 Quantitative Analysis of Affrication ................................................................................121 5.5 Discussion of Results .......................................................................................................132 CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................................................136 REFERENCES ...........................................................................................................................146 APPENDIX: EXAMPLE OF CODING SHEET ........................................................................155 VITA ...........................................................................................................................................156 vi LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Distribution of three variants among CF women speakers ....................................................53 2.2 Comparison of three variants between CF men and women speakers ...................................54 3.1 Examples of occlusive, assibilation, and affrication pronunciations in French .....................66 4.1 Overview of selected