Mathieu Avanzi Speech Prosody of French Regional Varieties (original) (raw)
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Regional Variations of Speech Rhythm in French: In Search of Lost Times
2012
This paper addresses the relevance of speech rhythm acoustic measures for the description of some standard, regional and contact varieties of French. First, the limitation of conventional speech rhythm measures (e.g. %V, ΔC or PVI) for the description of French regional variations is pointed out. Then, alternative acoustic measures of speech rhythm, based on supra-segmental characteristics associated with timing (regularity of accentual phrases) and tempo (articulation rate, speech rate) are introduced and discussed. A comparison with the conventional measures proves that long-term measures provide a classification which is more consistent with the expected classification, either in terms of continuous similarities or typological differences.
A corpus-based prosodic study of Alsatian, Belgian and Swiss French
The object of this paper is a prosodic study of the French language as it is spoken in Alsace, Belgium and Switzerland, also compared with standard French through large corpora (over 100 hours) of scripted and spontaneous speech. The data were segmented into phones by automatic alignment; pitch values were extracted and averaged over segments. Two features are addressed: initial stress (through pitch and duration correlates) and penultimate lengthening. Different patterns enable us to distinguish the three varieties under investigation. Swiss speakers exhibit pitch rise and polysyllabic word onset lengthening in clitic-nonclitic sequences, while Alsatians tend to lengthen the initial vowel of nonclitic words. Belgians show prepausal penultimate lengthening whereas the Swiss tend to lengthen the last two prepausal vowels.
A preliminary study of prosodic patterns in two varieties of suburban youth speech in France
This paper presents the first results of a research on the prosodic specificities of French speakers living in two poor multi-ethnic suburbs located in the north of Paris and in Rouen. The emphasis is on the acoustic analysis and the comparison of some particular prosodic patterns which are frequently used in the suburban youth speech. We show that there is no noteworthy difference between speakers from both suburbs. In particular, we found that both groups of speakers use rise-fall patterns associated with short syllables at the end of IP. This pattern is atypical in standard French, and its presence in both groups suggests that it constitutes a prosodic marker that is essential to the suburban accent identification.
Prosody in Swiss French accents: Investigation using analysis by synthesis
It is very common for a language to have different dialects or accents. The different pronunciations of the same words is one of the reasons for the different accents, in the same language. Swiss French accents have similar pronunciation to standard French, but noticeable differences in prosody. In this paper we investigate the use of standard French synthetic acoustic parameters combined with Swiss French prosody in order to evaluate the importance of prosody in modelling Swiss French accents. We use speech synthesis techniques to produce standard French pronunciation with Swiss French duration and intonation. Subjective evaluation to rate the degree of Swiss accent was conducted and showed that prosody modification alone reduces perceived difference between original Swiss accented speech and standard French coupled with original duration and intonation by 29%.
Tonal patterns, associations, and alignment of peaks in regional French
The intonation of regional varieties of French has been under-studied and remains an important empirical question. In this paper, I present an analysis of two varieties of French that are geographically distant but historically related. The main purpose of the analysis was to examine the effect of the regional factor on the tonal patterns, associations, and timing of the stress group initial and final peaks. The results showed no dialect effect on tonal pattern inventory and distribution or on tonal association and alignment. However, in both dialects women produced less utterance-medial falls and significantly delayed the peaks, compared with men. Additionally, the analysis suggested that the group initial versus final peaks in French appear to differ in secondary associations, which allows us to extend this concept to express the contrasts between different types of high targets and to detail the French language intonational grammar. This work contributes thus to the prosodic grammar of French and to the description of its dialects by providing evidence that they share the same intonational grammar but that groups of speakers demonstrate differences pertaining to its surface realization.
Journal of Language Contact, 2014
The Book As put forward by Gess, Lyche and Meisenburg in the very first sentence of their introduction (p. 1), Phonological Variation in French. Illustrations from Three Continents is the first book-length presentation of the first results of an ambitious, international project on the phonology of Contemporary French1 (= Phonologie du Français Contemporain, henceforth PFC) which has been launched in 2000. As recalled on page 10, the raison d'être of the PFC project was at the time, thanks to some modern technologies usable for the collection, storage and processing of large databases, to design a "reference corpus for French spoken throughout the world" which would enable phonologists working on French to provide more robust analyses based on authentic data rather than "on the same dubious data (Morin 1987), 'the linguistic Frankenstein dubbed Standard French' (Durand 2006: 81)". Structure The book itself and its chapters are clearly structured: The book is divided into three parts which are surrounded by an introductory chapter and a concluding chapter both provided by the editors: Part I (pp. 21-102) is devoted to the status and specificities of French as spoken in Africa. Part II (pp. 103-208) deals with European French and Part III (pp. 209-368) with North American French. All chapters (except for Chapters 1 and 14) adopt a similar structure: After having provided (when necessary) some relevant sociological, sociolinguistic, historical and/or geographical facts regarding the variety of French and of the other languages spoken in and around the studied area, the authors sketch out the PFC data their study rely on and propose a thorough description of the phonemic book reviews
Revista de Estudos da Linguagem (International Thematic Issue: Speech Segmentation), 2018
Abstract: In this article we investigate the acoustic correlates of prosodic boundaries in French speech. We compare the prosodic structure annotation performed by experts in two multi-genre corpora (Rhapsodie and LOCAS-F). A uniform analysis procedure is applied to both corpora. The results show that the main acoustic correlates of prosodic boundaries are silent pauses and pre-boundary syllable lengthening. Pitch movements contribute to the perception of boundaries but are essentially correlates of boundary function, rather than boundary strength. Two levels of four-level annotation of boundary strength in the Rhapsodie corpus (periods and packages) correspond to the two-levels of strength in the LOCAS-F corpus. Keywords: prosody; speech segmentation; prosodic boundaries; corpus linguistics; French. Resumo: Neste artigo investigamos os correlatos acústicos de fronteiras prosódicas da fala em língua francesa. Comparamos a anotação da estrutura prosódica efetuada por anotadores experts em dois corpora multigêneros (Rhapsodie e LOCAS-F). Um procedimento de análise uniforme é aplicado a ambos os corpora. Os resultados indicam que os principais correlatos acústicos de fronteiras prosódicas são pausa silenciosa e alongamento da sílaba pré-fronteira. Movimentos de pitch contribuem para a percepção de fronteiras mas são essencialmente correlatos de funções de fronteira, e não de força de fronteira. Dois dos níveis de anotação dos quatro níveis de anotação de força de fronteira do corpus Rhapsodie (períodos e pacotes) correspondem aos dois níveis de intensidade do corpus LOCAS-F. Palavras-chave: prosódia; segmentação da fala; fronteiras prosódicas; linguística de corpus; francês.
Interplay of sociolinguistic factors in rhythmic variation in a minority French dialect
Speech Prosody 2016, 2016
A contact setting often limits speakers’ possibilities to practice the minority language in an array of contexts and thus affects its stylistic and sociolinguistic variation. This paper examines rhythmic variation in read and spontaneous speech samples from speakers of minority Ontario French (Canada). Rate, nPVI-V, VarcoV, %V and the CC model are used to examine the extent of sociolinguistic variation in the dataset and test the hypotheses of convergence to English and of sociolinguistic discontinuity. Age, gender and speaking style each appear to be significant factors, without showing interaction. Females and older speakers showed a more syllable-timed pattern than males and younger participants. In spontaneous speech, all speakers had a less syllable-timed rhythmicity, despite a faster rate. Overall, speakers did not converge to English.