Led by Dr. Hélène Blondeau and Dr. Alioune Sow, a special project funded by the French Embassy has examined “French in contact” across multiple locations and its implications for cultural productions. During the academic year 2017-2018, we have welcomed internationally recognized scholars. In September 2017, Dr. Gudrun Ledegen, Professor of Language Sciences and Sociolinguistics at the Université de Rennes 2, gave a talk on language contact in La Réunion.
In addition, in March 2018, we had two interrelated lectures on French in Contact in Canadian settings. Dr. Mireille Tremblay, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Montréal, delivered a lecture on the phenomenon of language variation and change in consequence markers in Montreal, where the French language is spoken by the majority of the population. Dr. Raymond Mougeon delivered his lecture on the same phenomenon, but in a minority setting in Welland Ontario, shedding light on the effect of language contact on language variation.
