Cross-linguistic prosodic transcription: French vs. English

Jacqueline Vaissière (1)

1 LPP - LPP - Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie - UMR 7018

This paper aims to give an insight into some specific traits of French prosody. By illustrating
the specificity of French, the aim is to bring to light some characteristics which make French
prosodically very different from English and other stress languages. The discussion thus comes to
grips with the difficulties of elaborating a unique way of describing prosody across languages.
An introductory part deals with some of the current methods for describing intonation. Wellknown
notions concerning French prosody are then recalled succinctly. Finally, some basic traits
of French are expounded and illustrated.

Mots clés: prosodic transcription; prosody; intonation

Domaines: Linguistique

Jacqueline Vaissière. Cross-linguistic prosodic transcription: French vs. English. N.B. Volskaya, N.D. Svetozarova, and P.A. Skrelin. Problems and methods of experimental phonetics. In honour of the 70th anniversary of Pr. L.V. Bondarko, St Petersburg State University Press, pp. 147-164, 2002. ⟨halshs-00316156v2⟩