Cover not available
Part of
The Phonetics–Phonology Interface: Representations and methodologies
Edited by Joaquín Romero and María Riera
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 335] 2015
► pp. 93–108

A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French

| University of Neuchâtel | University of Geneva
| University of Geneva
| University of Geneva
The aim of this paper is to provide an acoustical study of penultimate accentuation in French. We compare stretches of spontaneous speech produced by four Swiss speakers (from Neuchâtel, considered as the speakers of the regional variety) with the productions of a four Parisian speakers (considered as the speakers of the standard variety). The results of our study lead us to conclude that penultimate accentuation is less frequent in Parisian French than in Swiss French. More interestingly, the study reveals that the penultimate accentuation manifests different acoustic correlates when comparing the two varieties: while French speakers use mostly melodic cues solely to mark their penultimate syllable as prominent, speakers from Neuchâtel tend to prefer to use durational cues to do so.
Published online: 10 November 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.335.05ava
References (27)
References
Andreassen, Helen, Raphaël Maître & Isabelle Racine. 2010. “La Suisse”. Les variétés du français parlé dans l’espace francophone: Ressources pour l’enseignement ed. by Sylvain Detey, Jacques Durand, Bernard Laks & Chantal Lyche, 211-233. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Best, Catherine T. 2015. “Devil or angel in the details?”. This volume.
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2014. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer: Version 5.3. ([URL]) (Retrieved on January 10, 2014).Google Scholar
Cangemi, Francesco & Mariapaola D’Imperio. 2015. “Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian”. This volume.
Carton, Fernand, Robert Espesser & Jacqueline Vaissière. 1991. “Etude sur la perception de l’accent régional du Nord et de l’Est de la France”. Proceedings of the XII International Conference of Phonetic Sciences , Aix-en-Provence, 19-24 August 1991, 422-425.
Carton, Fernand, Mario Rossi, Denis Autesserre & Pierre Léon. 1983. Les accents des Français. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Delais-Roussarie, Elisabeth. 1996. “Phonological Phrasing and Accentuation in French”. Dam Phonology: HIL phonology papers II ed. by Marina Nespor & Norval Smith, 1-38. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Delattre, Pierre. 1966. “Les dix intonations de base du français”. The French Review 40:1.1-14.Google Scholar
Di Cristo, Albert. 1999. “Vers une modélisation de l’accentuation du français: Première partie”. Journal of French Language Studies 9:2.143-179. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durand, Jacques, Bernard Laks & Chantal Lyche, eds. 2009. Phonologie, variation et accents du français. Paris: Hermès.Google Scholar
Garde, Paul. 1965. L’accent. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Goldman, Jean-Philippe. 2011. “EasyAlign: An automatic phonetic alignment tool under Praat”. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence , 27-31 August 2001, 3233-3236. Baixas: International Speech Communication Association.
Goldman, Jean-Philippe & Anne Catherine Simon. 2007. “La variation prosodique régionale en français (Liège, Vaud, Tournai, Lyon): Description outillée”. Paper presented at the Phonologie du Français Contemporain Annual Conference, Paris, December 2007.
Hart, Johan T., René Collier & Antonie Cohen. 1990. A Perceptual Study of Intonation: An experimental-phonetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jun, Sun Ah & Cécile Fougeron. 2002. “Realizations of Accentual Phrase in French Intonation”. Probus 14:1.147-172. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, Philippe. 1987. “Prosodic and Rhythmic Structures in French”. Linguistics 25:5.925-949. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “Quelques changements prosodiques du français parlé de 1900 à 2000”. Études sur le changement linguistique en français ed. by Bernard Combettes & Christiane Marchello-Nizia, 205-216. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Miller, Joanne L., François Grosjean, Concetta Lomato. 1984. “Articulation Rate and its Variability in Spontaneous Speech: A reanalysis and some implications”. Phonetica 41:4.215-225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nava, Emily & Louis Goldstein. 2015. “Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups”. This volume.
Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel. 1986. Prosodic Phonology. Dordecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Post, Brechtje. 2000. Tonal and Phrasal Structures in French Intonation. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Romero, Joaquín & María Riera. 2015. “Introduction”. This volume.
Rossi, Mario. 1999. L’intonation, le système du français: Description et modélisation. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
Rossi, Mario, Albert Di Cristo, Daniel Hirst, Philippe Martin & Yukihiro Nishinuma. 1981. L’intonation: De l’acoustique à la sémantique. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. Phonology and Syntax: The relation between sound and structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sertling Miller, Jessica. 2007. Swiss French Prosody: Intonation, rate, and speaking style in the Vaud Canton. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Woehrling, Cécile. 2008. Accents régionaux en français: Perception, analyse et modélisation à partir de grands corpus. Ph.D. Dissertation, Paris Sud University.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Wendy Ayres-Bennett & Mairi McLaughlin
2024. The Oxford Handbook of the French Language, DOI logo
Stoenica, Ioana-Maria & Sophia Fiedler
2021. Multimodal Practice for Mobilizing Response: The Case of Turn-Final Tu Vois ‘You See’ in French Talk-in-Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Avanzi, Mathieu
2019. Cartographier les régionalismes du français en Suisse romande et en France voisine à l’ère des sciences participatives. Cahiers internationaux de sociolinguistique N° 14:2 ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.