Enquête sur les fonctions attribuées à certaines lettres de l'alphabet latin dans les systèmes graphiques du français entre le 11e et le 16e siècle.

Starting from an example of a problematic relationship between written and oral --the case of the letter n and its allograph in cursive writing u-- Gabriella Parussa studies the functioning of the written code before orthographic normalization, taking into account the diachronic and diatopic variation. Although until now some uncommon spellings have been interpreted as examples of a disconnection between written and spoken language, this analysis, which is based on vast literary and documentary corpora, shows that sometimes spelling can be closer to pronunciation than what has been said so far. Through a comparison with more recent and better studied phonetic phenomena and on the basis of some metalinguistic texts, this chapter tries to renew the way we consider the functions of the letter, as an element of the written code, and in relation with pronunciation. A finer analysis of the phonetic phenomenon of nasalization, based on recent studies on Modern French has provided the groundwork for a better interpretation of textual corpus data. This study also highlights, like other chapters in this book, the importance of the medium and the need to take it into account when studying the relation between oral and written language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]