Acoustic aspects of vowel harmony in French [Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS)]

International audienceThis paper explores acoustic and articulatory aspects of regressive vowel-to-vowel assimilation known as vowel harmony (VH) in French. Based on three speakers' renditions of 136 pairs of disyllabic word pairs containing a mid-vowel in the first, and a low or a non-low vowel in the second, syllables of each pair, we examined assimilatory effects of final vowels on the duration and spectral properties of non-final mid-vowels. Results show that /e/ and /o/ have longer duration, and occupy a more peripheral position in two speakers' vowel spaces when followed by a non-low rather than a low vowel. Phonological implications of these findings could be that vocalic contrasts referred to as tense-lax distinction in other languages and varieties of French would allow characterizing the assimilatory behavior of mid vowels of standard French in a uniform way

Acoustic aspects of vowel harmony in French

International audienceThis paper examines acoustic aspects of vowel harmony (VH), understood as regressive vowel-to-vowel assimilation, in two regional varieties of French in six speakers' productions of 107 disyllabic word pairs. In each word pair, the word-initial vowel (V1) was phonemically either /e/ or /o/, and the word-final stressed vowel (V2) alternated between /e-E/, /ø-oe/, /o-O/ or /i-a/. Results are consistent with the idea that VH in French entails variations in tongue height along with related displacements of the tongue position along the front-back axis. These effects were independent of both the number of morphemes and lexical frequency. They were more systematic in Northern than in Southern French speakers' speech. Linear mixed-effects models strongly suggest that VH is a gradient effect of the trigger on the harmonizing vowel. Results lend support to usage-based phonological approaches regarding gradient phonetic differences as part of the gestural scores that make up the lexicon and that can be variably grammaticalized in different varieties of the language

Acoustic aspects of vowel harmony in French [Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS)]

International audienceThis paper explores acoustic and articulatory aspects of regressive vowel-to-vowel assimilation known as vowel harmony (VH) in French. Based on three speakers' renditions of 136 pairs of disyllabic word pairs containing a mid-vowel in the first, and a low or a non-low vowel in the second, syllables of each pair, we examined assimilatory effects of final vowels on the duration and spectral properties of non-final mid-vowels. Results show that /e/ and /o/ have longer duration, and occupy a more peripheral position in two speakers' vowel spaces when followed by a non-low rather than a low vowel. Phonological implications of these findings could be that vocalic contrasts referred to as tense-lax distinction in other languages and varieties of French would allow characterizing the assimilatory behavior of mid vowels of standard French in a uniform way

Perceptual relevance of long-domain phonetic dependencies

International audienceThis study is concerned with the perceptual relevance of regressive vowel harmony in French. Two experiments were conducted. The first experiment showed that acoustic variations in a non-final vowel depending on the final vowel can be detected by listeners. The second experiment revealed that vowel harmony can facilitate the identification of the final vowel. Implications for current models of speech perception are discussed

From dilation to coarticulation: is there vowel harmony in French?

International audienceThis paper presents the preliminary results of an acoustic study, and a review of previous work on vowel harmony in French. It shows that harmony, initially regarded as regular sound change, is considered an optional constraint on the distribution of mid vowels. Acoustic evidence of anticipatory assimilation of pretonic mid vowels to tonic high and low vowels is shown in three speakers' readings of disyllabic words in two dialects. It is argued that vowel-to-vowel assimilation referred to as vowel harmony does exist in French, and likely to extend beyond morphological contexts in which it was previously thought to operate

Centers, Peripheries, and Popularity: The Emergence of Norms in Simulated Networks of Linguistic Influence

We simulate the dynamics of diffusion and establishment of norms, variants adopted by the majority of agents, in a large social influence network with scale-free small-world properties. Diffusion is modeled as the probabilistic uptake of one of several competing variants by agents of unequal social standing. We find that novel variants diffuse following an S-curve and stabilize as norms when three conditions are simultaneously satisfied: the network comprises both extremely highly connected agents (centers) and very isolated members (peripheries), and agents pay proportionally more attention to better connected, more “popular”, neighbors. These findings shed light on little known dynamic properties of centers and peripheries in large influence networks. They show that centers, structural equivalents of highly influential leaders in empirical studies of social networks, are propagators of linguistic influence, while certain peripheral individuals, or loners, can act either as repositories of old forms or initiators of new variants depending on the current state of the rest of the population

Acoustic aspects of vowel harmony in French

International audienceThis paper examines acoustic aspects of vowel harmony (VH), understood as regressive vowel-to-vowel assimilation, in two regional varieties of French in six speakers' productions of 107 disyllabic word pairs. In each word pair, the word-initial vowel (V1) was phonemically either /e/ or /o/, and the word-final stressed vowel (V2) alternated between /e-E/, /ø-oe/, /o-O/ or /i-a/. Results are consistent with the idea that VH in French entails variations in tongue height along with related displacements of the tongue position along the front-back axis. These effects were independent of both the number of morphemes and lexical frequency. They were more systematic in Northern than in Southern French speakers' speech. Linear mixed-effects models strongly suggest that VH is a gradient effect of the trigger on the harmonizing vowel. Results lend support to usage-based phonological approaches regarding gradient phonetic differences as part of the gestural scores that make up the lexicon and that can be variably grammaticalized in different varieties of the language

Léon, Pierre Roger, Précis de phonostylistique : parole et expressivité, Paris : Nathan Université, Série « linguistique », 1993

Fagyal Zsuzsanna. Léon, Pierre Roger, Précis de phonostylistique : parole et expressivité, Paris : Nathan Université, Série « linguistique », 1993. In: L'Information Grammaticale, N. 70, 1996. pp. 59-60