Phonetic Diversity vs. Sociolinguistic and Phonological Patterning of R in Québec French

In this study, we investigate the multifaceted realizations of the /R/ consonant in Québec French (QF) by combining sociolinguistic and phonological approaches. First, from a sociophonetic point of view, we utilize a mixed-effects multinomial logistic regression model to analyze the impact of various variables on the distribution of /R/ variants. Our analysis of location, birth year and gender reveals that each variable and its interactions significantly influence the distribution of /R/ variants. We identify three distinct speaker groups based on their preferences for these variants: those favoring apical variants, those using uvular trills, and those employing neither apical nor uvular trills (mostly using fricatives and their approximantized or vocalized variants). From a phonological point of view, we show that the use of the /R/ variants among the three groups correlates with syllabic position, with weaker variants displayed in so-called “weakening” contexts, such as coda and intervocalic onset. Our results thus show that the apparent diversity of /R/ realizations in QF actually follows a pattern from both a sociolinguistic and a formal phonological point of view.