Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:06:10.617Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Stress and cues to relative prominence in English and French: A perceptual study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

Dan Frost
Dan Frost*
Affiliation:
IUT2, Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The relative prominence of syllables is essential to the segmentation of speech and therefore a crucial component of language comprehension, acquisition and learning. Incorrect placement and marking of prominence in English by non-native speakers can lead to problems in comprehensibility. Because the English and French phonological systems are so different, especially in the domain of stress, this can cause serious difficulties for many French speakers learning English. Indeed, some authors have posited the existence of ‘stress deafness’ in certain individuals. I suggest that French and English native speakers listen differently for stress, attributing different importance to the acoustic cues of F0, duration, amplitude and formant structure. This study focuses on the relative importance of these four cues with both English and French stimuli for English and French native speakers, and the results support the hypothesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 2011 , pp. 67 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abercrombie, David. 1965. A phonetician's view of verse structure. In Abercrombie, David, Phonetics and linguistics, 16–25. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Astésano, Corinne. 2001. Rythme et accentuation en français. Invariance et variabilité stylistique. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, Collection Langue et Parole.Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E. & Edwards, Jan. 1994. Articulatory evidence for differentiating stress categories. In Keating, Patricia (ed.), Phonological structure and phonetic form: Papers in laboratory phonology III, 1–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benguerel, André-Pierre. 1973. Corrélats physiologiques de l'accent en français. Phonetica 27, 21–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 1989. Reflections on the dichotomy ‘stress’ vs. ‘syllable-timing’. Revue de Phonétique Appliquée 91–93, 99–130.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1958. A theory of pitch accent in English. Word 14, 109–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Cynthia. 2000. The interrelation between speech perception and phonological acquisition from infant to adult. In Archibald, John (ed.), Second language acquisition and linguistic theory, 4–63. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cambier-Langeveld, Tina & Turk, Alice. 1999. A cross-linguistic study of accentual lengthening: Dutch vs. English. Journal of Phonetics 27, 255–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. 1985. An introduction to English prosody. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. 1986. Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cutler, Anne, Dahan, Delphine & van Donselaar, Wilma. 1997. Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech 40 (2), 141–201.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dahan, Delphine & Bernard, Jean-Marc. 1996. Interspeaker variability in emphatic accent production in French, Language and Speech 39 (4), 341–374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Delattre, Pierre. 1938. L'accent final en français: accent d'intensité, accent de hauteur, accent de durée. The French Review 12 (2), 141–145Google Scholar
Delattre, Pierre. 1965. Comparing the phonetic features of English, French, German and Spanish: An interim report. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Google Scholar
Di Cristo, Albert. 1998. Intonation in French. In Hirst, Daniel & Di Cristo, Albert (eds.), Intonation systems: A survey of twenty languages, 88–103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dolbec, Jean & Santi, Serge. 1995. Effet du filtre linguistique sur la perception de l'accent: étude exploratoire. Travaux de l'Institut de Phonétique d'Aix 16, 41–60.Google Scholar
Dupoux, Emmanuel, Peperkamp, Sharon & Sebastián-Gallés, Núria. 2001. A robust method to study stress-deafness. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 110 (3.1), 1606–1618.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dupoux, Emmanuel & Peperkamp, Sharon. 1999. Fossil markers of language development: Phonological ‘deafness’ in adult speech processing. In Laks, Bernard & Durand, Jacques (eds.), Cognitive phonology, 168–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Durand, Jacques. 2009. Essai de panorama critique des accents du midi. In Baronian, Luc & Martineau, France (eds.), Le français, d'un continent à l'autre: mélanges offerts à Yves Charles Morin (Collection Les voies du français), 123–170. Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Dutoit, Thierry & Pagel, Vincent. 1996. Le projet MBROLA: vers un ensemble de synthétiseurs vocaux disponibles gratuitement pour utilisation non-commerciale. Actes des Journées d'études sur la parole, Avignon, 441–444.Google Scholar
Eckman, Fred. 1977. Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning 27, 315–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Nick. 2008. Usage-based and form-focused language acquisition: The associative learning of constructions, learned attention and the limited L2 endstate. In Robinson & Ellis (eds.), 164–194.Google Scholar
Faure, Georges & Di Cristo, Albert. 1973. Phonétique générale et phonétique descriptive du français. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Flege, James E. 1995. Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In Strange, Winifred (ed.), Speech perception and linguistics experience: Issues in crosslanguage research, 233–277. Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Flege, James E., Schirru, Carlo & MacKay, Ian R. A.. 2003. Interaction between the native and second language phonetic subsystems. Speech Communication 40 (4), 467–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, Dennis. 1955. Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 27 (4), 765–768.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, Dennis. 1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language and Speech 1 (2), 126–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, Dennis. 1965. The dependence of stress judgements on vowel formant structure. In Zwirner, Eberhard & Bethge, Wolfgang (eds.), 6th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 6), 306–311. Basel: Karger.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heldner, Mattias. 2001. Spectral emphasis as a perceptual cue to prominence. TMH-QPSR [Speech, Music and Hearing Quarterly Progress and Status Report] 42, 51–57.Google Scholar
Heldner, Mattias. 2003. On the reliability of overall intensity and spectral emphasis as acoustic correlates of focal accents in Swedish. Journal of Phonetics 31, 39–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, Daniel, Di Cristo, Albert & Espesser, Robert. 2000. Levels of representation and levels of analysis for intonation. In Horne, Merle (ed.), Prosody: Theory and experiment, 51–87. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Jennifer. 2000. The phonology of English as an international language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Robert. 1961. Perception of pitch, timbre and loudness. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 33 (11), 1550–1557.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Daniel. 1956. The pronunciation of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jun, Sun-Ah & Fougeron, Cécile. 1995. The accentual phrase and the prosodic structure of French. 13th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 12), vol. 2, 722–725.Google Scholar
Jun, Sun-Ah & Fougeron, Cécile. 2000. A phonological model of French intonation. In Botinis, Antonis (ed.), Intonation: Analysis, modeling and technology, 209–242. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacheret-Dujour, Anne & Beaugendre, Frédéric. 1999. La prosodie du français. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 2008. Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lado, Robert. 1957. Linguistics across cultures. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press.Google Scholar
Lehiste, Ilse. 1970. Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Philip. 1960. Some acoustic correlates of word stress in American English. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 32, 451–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2008. A unified model. In Robinson & Ellis (eds.), 341–371.Google Scholar
Mildner, Vesna. 2006. The cognitive neuroscience of human communication. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Morton, John & Jassem, Wiktor. 1965. Acoustic correlates of stress. Language and Speech 8, 159–187.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parmenter, Clarence E. & Blanc, A. V.. 1933. An experimental study of accent in French and English. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 48 (2), 598–607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennington, Martha. 1996. Phonology in English language teaching. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Peperkamp, Sharon & Dupoux, Emmanuel. 2002. A typological study of stress deafness. In Gussenhoven, Carlos & Warner, Natasha (eds.), Laboratory phonology 7, 203–240. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pike, Kenneth. 1945. The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Polivanov, Evgenij. 1931. La perception des sons d'une langue étrangère. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 4, 79–96.Google Scholar
Rasier, Laurent & Hiligsmann, Philippe. 2007. Prosodic transfer from L1 to L2: Theoretical and methodological issues. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique française 28, 41–66.Google Scholar
Rigault, André. 1962. Rôle de la fréquence, de l'intensité et de la durée vocaliques dans la perception de l'accent en français. 4th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Helsinki (ICPhS 4), 735–748. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Roach, Peter. 1982. On the distinction between ‘stress-timed’ and ‘syllable-timed’ languages. In Crystal, David (ed.), Linguistic controversies: Essays in linguistic theory and practice in honour of F. R. Palmer, 73–79. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Robinson, Peter & Ellis, Nick (eds.). 2008. Handbook of cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Mario. 1979. Le français, langue sans accent? In Fónagy, Ivan & Léon, Pierre (eds.), L'accent en français contemporain, 93–106. Montréal, Paris & Bruxelles: Didier.Google Scholar
Rost, Michael. 2002. Teaching and researching listening. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Sluijter, Agaath & van Heuven, Vincent. 1996. Spectral balance as an acoustic correlate of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 100 (4), 2471–2485.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sluijter, Agaath, van Heuven, Vincent & Pacilly, Jos. 1997. Spectral balance as a cue in the perception of linguistic stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101 (1) 503–513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tatham, Mark & Morton, Kate. 2006. Speech production and perception. Basingstoke: MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trubetzkoy, Nikolaj S. 1939. Grundzüge der Phonologie. Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 7.Google Scholar
Wenk, Brian J. & Wioland, François. 1982. Is French really syllable-timed? Journal of Phonetics 10, 193–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, Yi & Xu, Ching. 2005. Phonetic realization of focus in English declarative intonation. Journal of Phonetics 33, 159–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar