A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French
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Mathieu Avanzi
Abstract
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.
Abstract
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.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
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Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
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Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
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Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
-
Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
-
Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
-
Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
