The Realization Of/R/In Central Africa: A Preliminary Exploration Of The French Of Basaa Speakers (Cameroon)

The present study concentrates on the variety of French in contact with Basaa, a Bantu language (A43) spoken in Cameroon. Based on the perceptive examination of 511 occurrences of /r/ in read and semi-spontaneous speech, it shows that several realizations of this consonant alternate depending on the phonetic context. The apical R [(sic)] and the dorsal R [(sic)] are both found in prevocalic position, making of [(sic)] a strong variant in this dialect. A vocalization of R is observed in postvocalic contexts despite the fact that Basaa allows (C)VC syllables and, interestingly, C+R clusters favor the apical variant no matter their position with respect to the syllable nucleus. Finally, repetitions of the same words tend to indicate that a form of lexical conditioning might also be at play in determining the choice of variant (particularly [(sic)] vs. [(sic)] in syllable onset).