Jeffrey Lamontagne

Jeffrey Lamontagne

Assistant Professor, French and Italian

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Linguistics

Education

  • Ph.D., Linguistics, McGill University, 2020
  • M.A., Linguistics, University of Ottawa, 2014
  • Honors B.A. in Religious Studies with a Minor in Linguistics, University of Ottawa, 2013
  • B.A. in General Arts with a Minor in French Literature, University of Ottawa, 2012

Affiliations

Research areas

  • Varieties of French

  • Language variation and change

  • Phonetics and phonology

About Jeffrey Lamontagne

My research focuses on language variation and change, with a greater focus on the phonetics and phonology of Laurentian French (also called Canadian French, Quebec French, or Québécois). I’m especially interested in examining what variation teaches us about linguistic systems and how they interact with each other – for example, whether variability in one aspect of pronunciation can predict variability in others. My approach is to draw on cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic perspectives to the question of language variation and change, while considering the theoretical insights we can gain from that variation. Although my work primarily focuses on phonetics and phonology directly in spoken language, recent studies also investigate what variation in “casual writing” (e.g. informal Tweets) can tell us about language more broadly.

Selected publications

Working papers and Proceedings

  • Lamontagne, Jeffrey. Motiver ses choix: Examining variability in schwa placement and acoustics. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics: Kabyle Special Issue, 2016
  • Lamontagne, Jeffrey. A Little Forward in Laurentian French: A Variationist Analysis of Vowel Fronting in Laurentian French. Proceedings of the Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada), 2015
  • Lamontagne, Jeffrey. Examining opposing processes in Laurentian French vowels. Proceedings of the Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association, Brock University (St. Catharines, Canada), 2014
  • Lamontagne, Jeffrey and Jeff Mielke. Perception of Canadian French rhotic vowels. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 2013

Invited papers

  • Lamontagne, Jeffrey. Finding grammar amidst optionality and opacity: High-vowel tenseness in Laurentian French. Invited talk to the Phonatics Group on May 13th (Northwestern University), 2020
  • Lamontagne, Jeffrey. Wowwwww – There’s phonology on Twitter too! Invited keynote at the Canadian Linguistics Annual Undergraduate Symposium on March 23rd (McGill University), 2018

Courses taught

  • F315: The Sounds and Rhythms of French

  • F402: Introduction to French Linguistics

  • F401: Structure and Development of French (Spring 2021)

  • F579: Introduction to French Morphology (Spring 2021)

  • Introduction to Speech Sciences (LING210, McGill University)

  • Phonetics (LING330, McGill University)