Les paradoxes de la fréquence

This article is an enquiry (mostly doxographic) about the role of the frequency in linguistic description. Frequency is mostly seen as the object of quantitative methods, but it may also be intuitive and, sometimes, it is a purely abstract argument. Under these different forms it is an ubiquitous notion in linguistics, used by linguists of almost all theoretical persuations and in almost all fields of the discipline, but it is rarely regarded as a central concept of linguistics. Taking into account this diversity of the usages of the frequency, this article tries to investigate the paradoxical status of frequency, both ubiquitous and weakly elaborated. Two theoretical frameworks may be of particular interest for a general account of the frequency dimension of the linguistic phenomena: the Coserian framework (and its concept of norm), and the usage-based view of grammar developped in a cognitive perspective. These two frameworks gound frequency respectively in the historicity of the language use and in the universality of the cognitive processing.Dans cet article je propose une enquête, en grande partie doxographique, sur la notion de fréquence en linguistique. La fréquence peut certes être un objet empirique et mesuré (l'objet des " méthodes quantitatives "), mais elle peut également être le résultat d'une évaluation " intuitive " ou un argument abstrait, auquel ne correspond aucune grandeur. Sous ces différentes formes, elle est présente dans un grand nombre de domaines et de traditions linguistiques, bien qu'elle soit rarement envisagée comme l'une des problématiques communes de la discipline. Derrière la diversité des arguments ayant recours à la fréquence, il s'agira donc d'essayer de construire un point de vue général sur cette notion et de s'interroger sur les aspects paradoxaux de la fréquence en linguistique, à la fois omniprésente et peu élaborée. Deux cadres théoriques en particulier me semblent donner aujourd'hui un statut fort à la dimension de fréquence des faits linguistiques : dans une perspective structurale, la linguistique unitaire de Coseriu, particulièrement à travers la notion de norme ; dans une perspective cognitive, les modèles dits " usage-based ". Ces deux cadres fondent la fréquence respectivement dans l'historicité de l'activité de parler ou dans l'universalité du fonctionnement cognitif

A Method for Automatic and Dynamic Estimation of Discourse Genre Typology with Prosodic Features

This paper presents a work-in-progress on the automatic analysis of discourse genre in non-elicited speech. The study is focused on the development of bottom-up methods for automatic validation of discourse typologies found in linguistic descriptions (prosodic, syntactic, pragmatic and/or contextual and situational cues). The linguistic classification examined here opposes five discourse genres +/- controlled. To test this a priori classification under prosodic criteria, we propose a method that provides an automatic and dynamic estimation of discourse genre typology i.e. of prosodic similarities between discourse genres. This is achieved in a two-step procedure : a set of discriminant prosodic patterns is estimated and then used to raise a typology of discourse genres based on prosodic similarity criterion. The discriminant analysis reveals that a small number of prosodic patterns is sufficient to discriminate the 5 discourse genres. The typological analysis reveals some multilevel caterogical oppositions on a continuous prosodic scale that can be interpreted in terms of +/- controlled speech

A Method for Automatic and Dynamic Estimation of Discourse Genre Typology with Prosodic Features

This paper presents a work-in-progress on the automatic analysis of discourse genre in non-elicited speech. The study is focused on the development of bottom-up methods for automatic validation of discourse typologies found in linguistic descriptions (prosodic, syntactic, pragmatic and/or contextual and situational cues). The linguistic classification examined here opposes five discourse genres +/- controlled. To test this a priori classification under prosodic criteria, we propose a method that provides an automatic and dynamic estimation of discourse genre typology i.e. of prosodic similarities between discourse genres. This is achieved in a two-step procedure: a set of discriminant prosodic patterns is estimated and then used to raise a typology of discourse genres based on prosodic similarity criterion. The discriminant analysis reveals that a small number of prosodic patterns is sufficient to discriminate the 5 discourse genres. The typological analysis reveals some multilevel caterogical oppositions on a continuous prosodic scale that can be interpreted in terms of +/- controlled speech. Index Terms: discourse genre, prosody, typology, discriminant analysis, agglomerative clusterin