The purpose of this research is to examine the question of whether French vowels are underlyingly nasal or underlyingly non nasalized. The plan of the research will be to set forth the principal elements of the issue as presented by Bernard Tranel, and then to discuss the basis for his view that the question is best answered by means of a method of analysis he calls concrete generative phonology. The research will also point toward a conclusion that suggests that Tranel's approach to analyzing nasalized French vowels takes into account the concomitant evolution of what might be called the language's phonemic or phonetic representations, along with its lexical presentations of vocabulary, context, and dialect variations. Additionally, as appropriate, reference will be made to the fact that the method by which French vowels are analyzed and evaluated as underlyingly nasalized or nonnasalized is as important as the determination of whether or not such nasalization is underlying.
Tranel devotes a good deal of attention to showing that, if vowels in French are underlyingly nasal, they are not so for the reasons set forth by other analysts who are attempting, as he is, to explain the structure and rationale of French vowel sounds, but who are using methods he deems inadequate to the task. He is concerned to make a case for the method he uses to explain why and how patterns of vowel nasalization emerge in French. On the whole, he appears to take the view that standard methods for discussing the raison d'etre of vowel sounds are too much informed by variables, which in their turn invalidate the notion that the rationale attains the status of principle. If there is any single failing in Tranel's method, it is that his own diction is cumbersome and obfuscational. Nevertheless, beneath the convoluted prose, there seems to lurk a point of view about the relationship between French vocabulary and the vowel sounds that it stands for, which ackno...