Constricted phoneme /i/ in French?

Question

Related to this question: Nasal /i/ in French exists?

I noticed at times, the phoneme /i:/ in French is pronounced with more "constriction", like it happens in Swedish (https://youtu.be/wIlOPJLhks4?t=37 at 0:37 on "latin")

Same as Juan in the related question, I also thought at first that it was due to some kind of interaction with the preceding phoneme, but I came across a sample of a native speaker doing this on the word "si" with the vowel somewhat elongated: https://www.youtube.com/live/OWp1LZNU7k0?t=911 (at 15:11)

It's especially clear when you compare it to something like the Spanish "sí" or "si"

Here is another example given by Juan, along with his thoughts

Here's a link to a video of a female French native speaker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-_EZDKFv7U

I think she realizes that same phoneme when uttering certain words such as "aujourd'hui" (0:37 in the video)--which could be some sort of a diphthong pattern where /i:/ is somehow affected by the preceding phoneme /ɥ/--and then again at 1:02 when she says "traduire" (same mechanics involved as the example above).

I definitely hear more constriction in the realization of that /i:/. It may only occur in the phonetic diphthong pattern /ɥi/ that is phonemically realized as /ɥɪ̝ʝ/ (if that even exists, of course); I don't have any other examples at the moment, but I'll share them with you in case I come across any in the future.

Is this part of a dialectal variation? Where can I find more information about this?

I couldn't find any sources regarding this, but I'm not sure what I would even search for.

Edit: additional example: https://youtu.be/A_EkF94Zg0k?t=173 (Ici, cabinet, Tel-Aviv)

Answer 1

There are no dialectal variations in these videos.

Elisa chose to pronounce /'si: vu.za.'ve/ but she could just as easily have said /si.vu.za.'ve/. What lengthens the i and I believe causes what you call a constriction effect is the pause before vous.

In the second video, a similar optional pause follows aujourd'hui, before nous allons parler. At the end of traduire, Elisabeth makes a pause that is not expected in regular speech. She slows down her speech to make it easier for learners to understand. This is certainly what Elisa also does in Si vous avez.

You are less likely to find these /i:/ in everyday speech, except for example by someone who is hesitating.

That said, an i used in a stressed syllable is often longer than an i located elsewhere.

Answer 2

The pronunciation of i in all the examples you provide is not nasalized.

• [i] si, aujourd'hui, traduire,

• [ĩ] imparfait, lin, pincer, mince, (nasalized)

There is more constriction in the pronunciation of the i in "traduire", which means that she pronunces it very nearly as cardinal i (voyelles cardinales); one of the reasons for that is that she places a high pitched intonation on this syllable (dui). This is not the usual way to pronounce i (most of the time there is less constriction), but in main stream French it is perfectly acceptable to fluctuate between the more usual pronunciation of i and this high pitched i. It becomes apparent that there is such variation when one considers the pronunciation of "oui" for which at one extreme there is even a new spelling that reflects better this limit pronunciation (ouais, \wɛ). This variablity in the constriction (/wi, wɪ, we, wɛ) is not typical of the pronunciation of i in all cases: it is only true for "oui", but it shows that at times an [i] might be realized as an allophone quite near to [ɪ].