French intonational structure: Evidence from tonal alignment

• Published in: Journal of phonetics 2006-07, Vol.34 (3), p.343-371
• Main Author: Welby, Pauline
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0095-4470; 1095-8576
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2005.09.001

This study uses tonal alignment and other analyses to examine the structure of French intonational rises and intonational phonology more generally. I argue that the early rise and the late rise of the French accentual phrase (AP) are structurally different, that the former is a bitonal phrase accent and the latter a bitonal pitch accent. The late rise does not share all the characteristics typically associated with pitch accents, a finding discussed in relation to cross-linguistic distinctions between pitch accents and edge tones. Phrase length, expressed in number of syllables or in clock time, is the best predictor of the realization of the early rise, and thus of two-rise (LHLH) APs. I propose that the early L is edge-seeking—it seeks an association to the beginning edge of the first content word syllable of the AP and an optional association to the edge of an earlier syllable, which is often, but not always, the first syllable of the AP. For both rises, only one end point is anchored to a segmental landmark (the L beginning of the early rise; the H end of the late rise). The French data thus provide evidence that the strong segmental anchoring hypothesis, in which both ends of rises have anchor points, cannot be generalized to all spoken languages.