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The circumflex (^) is one of the five diacritics used in the French language. It may be used atop the vowels a, e, i, o, and u.

In French, the circumflex has three primary functions:

• It affects the pronunciation of a, e, and o; although used on i and u as well, it does not affect their pronunciation.
• It often indicates the historical presence of a letter (commonly s) that has, over the course of linguistic evolution, become silent and fallen away in orthography.
• Less frequently, it is used to distinguish between two homophones.

In certain words, the circumflex is idiopathic, and has no precise linguistic role.

First usages

The circumflex first appeared in written French in the 16th century. It was borrowed from Ancient Greek, and combines the acute accent and the grave accent. Grammarian Jacques Dubois (known as Sylvius) is the first writer known to have used the Greek symbol in his writing (although he wrote in Latin).

Several grammarians of the French Renaissance attempted to prescribe a precise usage for the diacritic in their treatises on language. It would be the 18th century before the circumflex's usage would become standardized to the customary employment in modern French.

Sylvius (1478 or 1489–1555)

Sylvius used the circumflex to indicate so-called "false diphthongs." Early modern French as spoken in Sylvius' time had coalesced all its true diphthongs into phonetic monophthongs. He justifies its usage in his work Iacobii Sylvii Ambiani In Linguam Gallicam Isagoge una, cum eiusdem Grammatica Latinogallica ex Hebraeis Graecis et Latinus authoribus (An Introduction to the Gallic (French) Language, And Its Grammar With Regard to Hebrew, Latin and Greek Authors) published by Robert Estienne in 1531. A kind of grammatical survey of French written in Latin, the book relies heavily on the comparison of ancient languages to his contemporary French and explained the specifics of his language. At that time, all linguistic treatises used classical Latin and Greek as their models. Sylvius presents the circumflex in his list of typographic conventions, stating:

aî, eî, oî, oŷ, aû, eû, oû, diphthongorũ notæ, vt maî, pleîn, moî, moŷ, caûſe, fleûr, poûr, id eſt maius, plenus, mihi, mei, cauſa, flos, pro.

Translation : "aî, eî, oî, oŷ, aû, eû, oû, are representations of diphthongs, such as maî, pleîn, moî, moŷ, caûse, fleûr, poûr, or, in Latin, maius, plenus, mihi, mei, causa, flos, pro."

Note : it is not possible given the limitations of Wikipedia and HTML to render properly the graphical conventions used by Sylvius. He placed the circumflex and dieresis (French tréma) not atop the vowel, but between the two letters of the diphthong in question. Contrary also to this text, there were no italics to isolate the autonyms, and punctuation has been modernized to reflect current conventions.

Sylvius was quite aware that the circumflex was purely a graphical convention. He showed that these diphthongs, even at that time, had been reduced to monophthongs, and used the circumflex to "join" the two letters that had historically been diphthongs into one phoneme. When two adjacent vowels were to be pronounced independently, Sylvius proposed using the dieresis, called the tréma in French. Sylvius gives the example traî (pronounced /trɛ/ for "je trais") as opposed to traï (pronounced /tra:i/ for "je trahis"). Even these groups, however, did not represent true diphthongs (such as the English "try," /traj/), but rather adjacent vowels pronounced separately without an interposing consonant. As French no longer had any true diphthongs, the dieresis alone would have sufficed to distinguish between ambiguous vowel pairs. His circumflex was entirely unneeded. As such the tréma became standardized in French orthography, and Sylvius' circumflex usage never caught on. But the grammarian had pointed out an important orthographical problem of the time.

At that time, the combination eu had two pronunciations:

• /y/ as in sûr and mûr, written ſeur, meur (or as ſeûr and meûr in Sylvius' work), or
• /œ/ as in cœur and sœur, written by Sylvius not only with a circumflex, but a circumflex topped with a macron (which cannot be produced here: the diacritics have been placed side-by-side for illustrative purposes), cêūr and ſêūr.

Sylvius' proposals were never adopted per se, but he opened the door for discussion among French grammarians to improve and disambiguate French orthography.

Étienne Dolet

Étienne Dolet, in his Maniere de bien traduire d'une langue en aultre : d’aduantage de la punctuation de la langue Francoyse, plus des accents d’ycelle (1540), uses the circumflex (this time as a punctuation mark written between two letters) to show three metaplasms:

• 1. Linguistic syncope, or the disappearance of an interior syllable, shown by Dolet as: lai^rra, pai^ra, urai^ment (vrai^ment), don^ra for laiſſera (laissera), paiera, uraiemẽt (vraiment), donnera. It is worthy of note that before the 14th century, the so-called "mute e" was always pronounced in French as a schwa (/ə/), regardless of position. For example, paiera was pronounced [pɛəra] instead of the modern [pɛra]. In the 1300s, however, this unaccented e began to silence altogether in hiatus and fall away phonemically, although it remained in orthography. Some of the syncopes Dolet cites, however, had the mute e reintroduced later: his lai^rra /lɛra/ is now /lɛsəra/ or /lɛsra/, and don^ra /dɔ̃ra/ is today /dɔnəra/ or /dɔnra/.
• 2. Haplology (the suppression of repeated or close phonemes): Dolet cites forms which no longer exist: au^ous (av^ous), n^auous (n^avous) for auez uous (avez-vous) and n'auez uous (n'avez-vous).
• 3. Contraction of an é followed by a mute e in the feminine plural, possible in poetry, which was rendered as a long close mid-vowel /eː/. It is important to remember that mute "e" at the end of a word was pronounced as a schwa until the 17th century. Thus pense^es [pɑ̃seː], ſuborne^es (suborne^es) for pensées [pɑ̃seə], subornées. Dolet specifies that the acute accent should be written in noting the contraction. This contraction of two like vowels into one long vowel is also seen in other words, such as a^age [aːʒə] for aage [aaʒə] (âge).

Thus Dolet renders the circumflex the sign of silent phonemes, which became one of the uses for which the diacritic is still used today. Although not all his suggested usages were adopted, his work has allowed insight into the historical phonetics of French. Dolet may have apprised his contribution best in his own words: “Ce ſont les preceptions” [préceptes], “que tu garderas quant aux accents de la langue Francoyse. Leſquels auſsi obſerueront tous diligents Imprimeurs : car telles choſes enrichiſſent fort l'impreſsion, & demõſtrent” [démontrent], “que ne faiſons rien par ignorance.” Translation: “It is these precepts that you should follow concerning the accents of the French language. All diligent printers should also observe these rules, because such things greatly enrich printing and demonstrate that nothing is left to chance.”

Thomas Sébillet

Thomas Sébillet included Dolet's treatise in his publication of Art Poétique in 1556. He adopted the usage of the circumflex atop the vowels to show syncope: laîra, paîra, vraîement [sic].

Modification of the quality of vowels

Today, the circumflex affects the pronunciation of the letters a, e and o in some dialects.

• â → /ɑ/ ("velar" or back a) ;
• ê → /ɛ/ (open e; equivalent of è or e followed by two consonants) ;
• ô → /o/ (equivalent to o at the end of a syllable)

This is sometimes the only reason for the presence of a circumflex within a word. The diacritic disappears in related words if the pronunciation changes. Witness:

• infâme /ɛ̃fɑm/, but infamie /ɛ̃fami/,
• grâce /gʁɑs/, but gracieux /gʁasjø/,
• fantôme /fɑ̃tom/, but fantomatique /fɑ̃tɔmatik/.

There are nonetheless notable exceptions : bêtise is pronounced /betiz/ with a closed /e/, despite the presence of the circumflex and its formation from bête /bɛt/, One might expect *bétise.

Many French speakers also lengthen vowels displaying the circumflex when they speak.

In many varieties of French, the letters with and without circumflex do not change their vowel quality, particularly in Provence and other regions of Southern France. Thus in these areas, it is not uncommon to hear dôme pronounced /dɔm/ instead of the standard /dom/. Likewise, everywhere in France, certain persons don't make a difference between /ɑ/ and /a/, so it is not uncommon, for example, to hear /am/ instead of /ɑm/ for the word âme.

Indication of historic Greek omega

In words derived from the Greek, the circumflex over o often indicates the presence of the Greek letter omega (ω) when the word is pronounced with the sound /o/: diplôme (δίπλωμα), cône (κῶνος). This rule is sporadic, because there are many words of Greek origin with the closed /o/ pronunciation that are written without the circumflex, such as axiome (ἀξίωμα), /aksjom/. Likewise, if the former omega is no longer pronounced as /o/ in the French, the circumflex is not used: comédie /kɔmedi/ (κωμῳδία).

Indication of a historical phoneme

In many cases, the circumflex indicates the historical presence of a phoneme which over the course of linguistic evolution has become silent, and then dropped in orthography altogether.

Disappearance of the "s"

This is by far the most common phenomenon involving the circumflex. Most incidences come from interposing /s/ before another consonant. Around the time of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, such post-vocalic /s/ sounds had begun to mute before hard consonants in many words, bringing with it a compensatory elongation of the preceding vowel, which had largely disappeared by the 18th century.

Orthography marked the presence of the muted /s/ for some time, and various attempts were made to distinguish the historical presence graphically, but without much success. Notably, playwright Pierre Corneille, in printed editions of his plays, used the "long s" (ſ) to indicate silent "s" and the traditional form for the /s/ sound when pronounced (tempeſte, haſte, teſte vs. peste, funeste, chaste).

The circumflex was officially introduced into the 1740 edition of the dictionary of the Académie Française. In subsequently introduced neologisms, however, the French lexicon was enriched with Latin-based words which retained their /s/ both in pronunciation and orthography, although the historically evolved word may have let the /s/ drop in favor of a circumflex. Thus, many learned words, or words added to the French vocabulary since then often keep both the pronunciation and the presence of the /s/ from Latin. For example:

• feste (first appearing in 1080) → fête, but:
  • festin: borrowed in the 16th century from the Italian festino,
  • festivité: borrowed from the Latin festivitas in the 19th century, and
  • festival: borrowed from the English festival in the 19th century

have all retained their /s/, both written and pronounced. Likewise the related pairs tête/test, fenêtre/défenestrer, bête/bestiaire", etc.

Disappearance of other letters

The circumflex also serves as a vestige of other muted letters, particularly letters in hiatus where two vowels have contracted into one phoneme, such as aage → âge; baailler → bâiller, etc.

Likewise, the former medieval diphthong "eu" when pronounced /y/ would often, in the 18th century, take a circumflex to distinguish them from homophones, such as deu → dû (from devoir vs. du = de + le); creu → crû (from croître vs. cru from croire) ; seur → sûr (the adjective vs. the preposition sur), etc.

• cruement → crûment;
• meur → mûr.

Idiopathic cases

Some circumflexes appear for no known reason. It is thought to give words an air of prestige, like a crown (thus trône, prône, suprême and voûte).

Linguistic interference sometimes accounts for the presence of a circumflex. This is the case in the first person plural of the preterite indicative (or passé simple), which adds a circumflex by association with the second person plural, thus:

• Latin cantavistis → OF chantastes → chantâtes (after the muting of the interposing /s/)
• Latin cantavimus → OF chantames → chantâmes (by interference with chantâtes).

All incidences of the first and second persons plural of the preterite take the circumflex in the conjugation ending except the verb haïr, due to its necessary dieresis (nous haïmes, vous haïtes).

Distinguishing homographs

Although normally the grave accent serves the purpose of differentiating homographs in French (là ~ la, où ~ ou, çà ~ ça, à ~ a, etc.), the circumflex, for historic reasons, has come to serve a similar role. In fact, almost all the cases where the circumflex is used to distinguish homographs can be explained by the reasons above: it would therefore be false to declare that it is in certain words a sign placed solely to distinguish homographs, as with the grave accent. However, it does allow one to remove certain ambiguities, as noted in the monophthongization of ëu /y/, homographs were created which were distinguished with a circumflex.

The following are examples:

• sur ~ sûr(e)(s) (from seür → sëur): the homography with the adjective sur(e), "sour", justifies maintaining the accent in the feminine and plural states, which stays in derived words such as sûreté;
• du ~ dû (from deü): as the homography disappears in the inflected forms of the participe passé, we have dû but dus / due(s);
• mur ~ mûr(e)(s) (from meür): the maintaining of the accent in all the forms as well as derived words (mûrir, mûrissement) must be taken into account.

"New" orthography

Francophone experts, aware of the difficulty the circumflex represents and the inconsistency of its usage, proposed in 1990 a simplified orthography published in the Journal officiel de la République française and put forth that the circumflex over the letters u and i should be abolished except in cases where it would create ambiguities and homographs. These recommendations, widely criticized at the time of their introduction, have had no widespread adoption, but are encouraged by the Académie française.

See also

• Diacritic
• Latin alphabet
• Reforms of French orthography

Bibliography

• Bernard Cerquiglini, L'Accent du souvenir, 165 pages, Éditions de Minuit, 1995, ISBN 2-7073-1536-2
• This article draws heavily on the fr:Accent circonflexe article in the French-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of February 18 2006.