{"id":4768,"date":"2016-10-24T10:41:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T14:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/?post_type=cu_people&#038;p=4768"},"modified":"2026-01-09T14:19:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:19:57","slug":"randall-gess","status":"publish","type":"cu_people","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/people\/randall-gess\/","title":{"rendered":"Randall Gess"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"mb-6 cu-pageheader cu-component-updated md:mb-12\">\n    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 pb-5 after:w-10 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px\">\n                    \n             \n                \n            <\/h1>\n\n    \n    <\/header>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Office Hours: <\/strong>Sabbatical Fall 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am an English-French bilingual from Texas \u2013 go figure! Achieving bilingualism has been a lifetime endeavour for me. I love French and I love her sister languages: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc., as well as French-lexified creoles. I have a long (30-year) history of working on historical French phonology and for the past several years have also been working on phonological variation in current varieties, focusing especially on those in Canada. I am also passionate about the teaching and learning of French and French linguistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Research Interests<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Phonological variation in French<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Historical phonology of French<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>French corpus linguistics and its applications to teaching<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Second language acquisition of French<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Teaching French pronunciation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Haitian Creole<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently I have several specific projects going on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Documenting the French spoken in Maillardville (Coquitlam), British Columbia.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Exploring uses of spoken language corpora in the teaching of French oral skills<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Publications and presentations since 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Book<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bullock, Barbara and Randall Gess (under contract). <em>Linguistics through French<\/em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Edited books<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gabriel, Christoph, Randall Gess and Trudel Meisenburg. 2022. <em>Manual of Romance Phonetics and Phonology<\/em>. Berlin &amp; New York: De Gruyter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Journal articles<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Herschensohn, Julia and Randall Gess. 2019. Transfer cost and the developmental path to target object clitic prosody. <em>Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism<\/em> 9(6): 849-853. <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1075\/lab.19055.her\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1075\/lab.19055.her<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Herschensohn, Julia and Randall Gess. 2018. Acquisition of L2 French pronouns by advanced Anglophone learners. <em>Languages<\/em>, <em>3<\/em>(2), 15; doi: 10.3390\/languages3020015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2017. Using Corpus Data in the Development of&nbsp;Second Language Oral Communicative Competence. <em>Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching <\/em>8: 13-31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Book chapters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bullock, Barbara E. and Randall Gess. 2024.&nbsp; French in North America. <em>Oxford Handbook of the French Language.<\/em> Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Mairi McLaughlin (eds.), 479-499. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2022. A speech corpus approach to teaching French practical phonetics online. <em>Online language teaching in diverse contexts.<\/em> Angela George and Rachel Friedman (eds.), 61-74. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meisenburg, Trudel, Christoph Gabriel and Randall Gess. 2022. Introduction. <em>Manual of Romance Phonetics and Phonology<\/em>. Berlin &amp; New York: De Gruyter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall, Haike Jacobs and Bernard Laks. 2020. Chapter 24. \u00c9volution depuis l\u2019ancien fran\u00e7ais. <em>Grande Grammaire Historique du Fran\u00e7ais<\/em>. Christiane Marchello-Nizia, Bernard Combettes, Sophie Pr\u00e9vost et Tobias Scheer (eds.). Berlin &amp; New York: De Gruyter. DOI: <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9783110348194-027\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9783110348194-027<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2019. On the reduction of \/\u0292\/ in a minority North American variety of French. <em>Contributions of Romance Languages to Current Linguistic Theory<\/em>. Deborah Arteaga (ed.), 115-136. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 95. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2013. Compensatory lengthening in Old French: The Role of the Speaker. <em>Research on Old French: The State of the Art<\/em>, Deborah Arteaga (ed.), 87-105. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 88. Dordrecht: Springer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>Encyclopedia entries<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall and Darya Kavitskaya. 2025 (submitted). Compensatory Lengthening. International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 3rd Edition. Elsevier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2025 (submitted). The Phonology of French. International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 3rd Edition. Elsevier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Presentations<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2024. Paper presented at the Colloque de l\u2019Association des professeur.e.s de fran\u00e7ais des universit\u00e9s et coll\u00e8ges canadiens, McGill University, June 15-19. \u201cLes effets d\u2019un cours sur le fran\u00e7ais oral sur la confiance des apprenant.e.s\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2023c. Paper presented at the Colloque de l\u2019Association des professeur.e.s de fran\u00e7ais des universit\u00e9s et coll\u00e8ges canadiens, York University, May 27-30. \u201cLe traitement de l\u2019input dans la didactique de la prononciation avanc\u00e9e\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2023b. Paper presented at the 7th Colloque international sur l\u2019enseignement du fran\u00e7ais langue \u00e9trang\u00e8re, University of Puerto Rico, February 23-25. \u201cL\u2019enseignement de la phonologie r\u00e9ceptive avanc\u00e9e\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2023a. Paper presented remotely at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, San Francisco, January 5-8. Session on New Approaches to Romance Linguistics. \u201cVariation among French heritage bilinguals in a French minority language context: A case study of four sisters in British Columbia\u2019s Metro Vancouver Regional District\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2021c. Paper presented remotely at the 15th International Conference on Foreign Languages, Communication and Culture (WEFLA 2021), University of Holgu\u00edn, Cuba, April 28-30. \u201cSpoken language corpora and the mirroring technique in foreign language teaching\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2021b. Paper presented remotely at the Conference on Teaching Languages Online, University of Calgary, March 5-6. Panel on Creative Approaches to Online Language Learning. \u201cOnline teaching of practical phonetics: How (and why) to use the mirroring technique remotely\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2021a. Paper presented remotely at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, Toronto, January 7-10. Session on New Approaches to Romance Linguistics. \u201cSpoken language corpora and the L2 acquisition of Romance Languages\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2019d. Paper presented at the Colloque de l\u2019Association des professeur.e.s de fran\u00e7ais des universit\u00e9s et coll\u00e8ges canadiens, University of British Columbia, June 1-4. \u201cCorpus oral et reflet sonore dans la pratique de l\u2019oral\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2019c. Paper presented at the 13th International Conference on Foreign Languages, Communication and Culture (WEFLA 2019), University of Holgu\u00edn, Cuba, April 24-26. \u201cResponsabilisation des \u00e9tudiants au niveau du cursus du fran\u00e7ais\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2019b. Poster presented at the 37th Congreso Internacional de la Asociaci\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola de Ling\u00fc\u00edstica Aplicada, Universidad de Vallodolid, March 27-29. \u201cAddressing curricular needs of post-immersion students of French: The potential of a spoken language corpus in a university program in Ontario, Canada\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2019a. Paper presented at the 5th Colloque international sur l\u2019enseignement du fran\u00e7ais langue \u00e9trang\u00e8re, University of Puerto Rico, February 28-March 2. \u201cLe corpus PFC dans l\u2019enseignement du fran\u00e7ais : perspective plurielle int\u00e9gr\u00e9e\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Herschensohn, Julia, and Randall Gess. 2017. Paper presented at Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition 13, Universitat de les Illes Balears, September 7-9. \u201cAcquisition of L2 French object pronouns by advanced Anglophone learners\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2017. Paper presented at the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, University of Delaware, April 20-23. \u201cOn the debbucalization of \/\u0292\/ in a minority North American variety of French\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2017. Paper presented at the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto Phonology Workshop, March 24-26. \u201cDebuccalization of \/\u0292\/ in French: A phonetic case study from a B.C. speaker\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2016. Paper presented at the conference, Fran\u00e7ais Langue Orale et Linguistique \u2013 Phonologie du fran\u00e7ais contemporain: schwa, phonologie de corpus, Paris, November 17-19. \u201cLa d\u00e9sarticulation de \/\u0292\/ chez un locuteur de Colombie-Britannique\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Boutin, B\u00e9atrice Akissi, and Randall Gess. 2016. Paper presented at the conference, Fran\u00e7ais Langue Orale et Linguistique \u2013 Phonologie du fran\u00e7ais contemporain: schwa, phonologie de corpus, Paris, November 17-19. \u201cY-a-t-il un schwa sp\u00e9cifique au fran\u00e7ais du S\u00e9n\u00e9gal?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Herschensohn, Julia, and Randall Gess. 2016. Paper presented at EuroSLA 26, Jyv\u00e4skyl\u00e4, Finland, August 24-27. \u201cProsodic Transfer in the L2 acquisition of French pronouns\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2015. Paper presented at the conference, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching, Dallas, October 16-17. \u201cExploiting corpus data in the teaching of L2 pronunciation: The case of the Phonology of Contemporary French (PFC) project\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gess, Randall. 2014. Paper presented at the conference, Fran\u00e7ais Langue Orale et Linguistique, Workshop on Phonologie et phon\u00e9tique: Processus (phonologiques), Paris, December 4-9. \u201cLa contr\u00f4le du locuteur dans les processus phonologiques\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":5949,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cu_people_first_name":"Randall","cu_people_last_name":"Gess","cu_people_initials":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_people_type":[40],"cu_people_expertise":[],"class_list":["post-4768","cu_people","type-cu_people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_people_type-professor-emeritus"],"acf":{"cu_people_job_title":"Professor","cu_people_degree":"B.A. (University of Texas), M.A. (University of Texas), Ph.D. (University of Washington)","cu_building":"","cu_people_office_num":"","cu_people_pronoun":"","cu_people_designation":"","cu_people_email":"randall.gess@carleton.ca","cu_people_phone":"","cu_people_phone_ext":"","cu_people_linkedin":"","cu_people_bluesky":"","cu_people_twitter":"","cu_people_instagram":"","cu_people_facebook":"","cu_people_website":"","cu_people_orcid":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_people"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10375,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people\/4768\/revisions\/10375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_people_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_type?post=4768"},{"taxonomy":"cu_people_expertise","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_people_expertise?post=4768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}