1. Accentuation and phrasing in Romance: Occitan and French
Rafèu Sichel-Bazin1,2, Carolin Buthke1, Trudel Meisenburg1
1 Universität Osnabrück, 2 Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona)
DFG-Projekt
Intonation im Sprachkontakt: Okzitanisch und Französisch

2. STRUCTURE 1. Project and data 2. Theoretical background
3. General basic contour: LHiLH*
3.1 Initial accents
3.2 Pitch accents
4. Boundaries
4.1 Continuation contours and hesitations Continuation rise and sustained pitch Continuation fall
4.2 Utterance-final contours Upstepped last prenuclear rise Delayed peak
5. Conclusion

3. 1. PROJECT AND DATA
Project “Intonation in contact: Occitan and French”

4. 1. PROJECT AND DATA
Project “Intonation in contact: Occitan and French”
Occitan and French prosody, accentuation and phrasing
– Occitan: word accent on the penultimate or ultimate
– French: phrase final accent
Northern (N-) French: close to standard French
Southern (S-) French: in close contact to Occitan
Data
Situations survey (Prieto 2001,
Neutral yes/no question: a1. You enter a shop where you never went before and you ask if they have mandarins  ‘Do you have mandarins?’
Confirming yes/no question: d6. John has said that he’d come for dinner. You ask him to confirm it.  ‘You will come for dinner, right?’

5. 1. PROJECT AND DATA
Data
Map task (
Summary of the fable “The North wind and the sun” (IPA 1999)

6. 1. PROJECT AND DATA
Corpus: speakers from La Cauna/Lacaune, Tolosa/Toulouse, Lille & Orléans

7. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
French
Post (2000): syntactic approach, lexical accents, deletion process
Di Cristo (2009):
Jun & Fougeron (2002), ~ Welby (2006):

8. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Occitan
Hualde (2003a, 2004), Sichel-Bazin (2009):
Tonal movements on syllables that are not metrically strong
 initial or secondary accents
(Hualde 2003a)

9. 3. GENERAL BASIC CONTOUR in all 3 varieties LHiLH*
basic contour in Gallo-Romance intonation
Corresponding prosodic unit (accentual phrase, AP)
French: determined by final (and optionally initial) accent
Occitan: determined by lexical accent plus surrounding clitics = clitic group
APs are organized into Intonational Phrases (IPs)
– prenuclear AP(s) vs. nuclear AP
– boundary tone(s)

10. 3. GENERAL BASIC CONTOUR
‘to move forward he folded up’

11. 3.1 INITIAL ACCENTS
Tonal movements on syllables that are not metrically strong
Traditional “accent d’insistance” to signal emphasis (Carton et al 1976, Fónagy 1980, Astésano 2001)
Possible features:
Tonal rise (to variable height)
Onset consonant strengthening (under emphasis)
Intensity peak
Usually no lengthening
More frequent in cases of emphasis, but quite generalized today
Marking of left boundaries (in support of phrasing)
On initial syllables of first content word
Also possible on clitics

12. 3.1 INITIAL ACCENTS in Occitan
‘to move forward he folded up’

13. 3.1 INITIAL ACCENTS: clash conditions
French: clash usually avoided
Occitan: clash situations possible (Hualde 2003a)
Spanish
Initial rises possible in emphatic or didactic speech, clash said to be avoided
Hualde 2003b, to appear: clash situations are marked, but accent correlates split up between syllables:
SYLLABLE
INITIAL = PRETONIC
TONIC
PITCH + -
INTENSITY
DURATION

14. 3.1 INITIAL ACCENTS in French: clash conditions
‘he gets started to heat up, heat up’
SYLLABLE
chau-
[ʃo
-ffer
fe]
PITCH +
INTENSITY
+/-
DURATION -
Onset consonant strengthening

15. 3.1 INITIAL ACCENTS in French: clash conditions
‘who make a bet to…’
SYLLABLE
pa-
[pˑa
-ri
ʁi]
PITCH - +
INTENSITY
DURATION
Onset consonant strengthening

16. 3.2 PITCH ACCENTS in our 3 varieties
Obligatory accents on metrically strong AP-final syllables:
Tonal movement (rising or falling)
Eventually intensity peak
Lengthening
APs organized into IPs:
1 (or more) prenuclear accent(s), 1 nuclear accent
nuclear accent: most prominent, normally rightmost
D’Imperio et al (2007), French left dislocated IPs:
– prenuclear and nuclear pitch accents differ in alignment and scaling properties:
PRENUCLEAR
NUCLEAR
ALIGNMENT: start of the rise
EARLIER
LATER
SCALING: tonal level of the H target
HIGH
HIGHER
PERCEPTION
HIGH LEVEL TONE
RISE

17. 3.2 PRENUCLEAR vs. NUCLEAR ACCENTS
Rising contours: similar observations for the 3 varieties
Higher scaling of nuclear accents: due to H boundary tone?
Differences in alignment: due to different pitch accent types?
Differences in slope:
convex in prenuclear accents > H*?
concave in nuclear accents > LH* H%?
But some prenuclear accents are actually LH* (especially in S-French and Occitan)  more research needed

18. 3.2 PRENUCLEAR vs. NUCLEAR ACCENTS
‘the story between the North wind and the sun, …’

19. 4. BOUNDARIES: 4.1 CONTINUATION CONTOURS and HESITATIONS
Continuation rise / sustained pitch: H%
‘the traveling man, er… tightens his coat’

20. 4.1.1 CONTINUATION RISE S-French: on etymological schwa syllables
‘the coat of a traveling man who passes the…’

21. 4.1.1 CONTINUATION RISE N-French: also on non etymological schwas
‘the story between the North wind and the sun, …’

22. 4.1.1 CONTINUATION RISE Occitan: on different vowels
‘and then he wanted to make him lose the …’

23. 4.1.2 CONTINUATION FALL Continuation fall: L%
‘and he tightened a coat’

24. 4.1.2 CONTINUATION FALL: boundary tones
Continuation fall: L%
Utterance-final boundary tone: T#
IP-final boundary tone: T%

25. 4.1.2 CONTINUATION FALL N-French: also on non etymological schwas
‘make a competition’

26. 4.1.2 CONTINUATION FALL N-French: also on non etymological schwas
 continuation or hesitation
‘who has… won… on… the North wind.’

27. 4.1.2 CONTINUATION FALL
Interrupted prosodic constituents: lengthening and falling contour
‘the coat of a traveling man who passes the…’

28. 4.1.2 CONTINUATION FALL
Interrupted prosodic constituents: lengthening and falling contour
‘and then he wanted to make him lose the …’

29. 4.2 BOUNDARY TONES: UTTERANCE-FINAL CONTOURS
Utterance-final contour: L* L#
Pitch reaches the baseline of the speaker’s tessitura  L# ≠ L%
2 types of last prenuclear contours:
upstepped rise
delayed peak

30. 4.2.1 UPSTEPPED LAST PRENUCLEAR RISE
D’Imperio et al (2007)
Last prenuclear AP in left-dislocated IPs: slightly different pattern
– continuation rise pattern
– nuclear configuration: rise
– last prenuclear AP: downstep
 bigger contrast with IP-final rise
Our data
– Nuclear configuration: fall
– Last prenuclear accent upstepped (LHi or LH*)
 bigger contrast with IP-final fall
Due to an increased range in the focus domain?
Focus domain: final, 2 APs
– last or nuclear AP: falling contour
– prenuclear AP: upstepped rising contour

31. 4.2.1 UPSTEPPED LAST PRENUCLEAR RISE
‘the one who would make him take off the jacket. The blazer.’

32. 4.2.1 UPSTEPPED LAST PRENUCLEAR RISE
‘and decide to find out who is the strongest’

33. 4.2.2 DELAYED PRENUCLEAR PEAKS
Utterance-final contour: L* L#
Last prenuclear AP-final rises:
both L and H* targets may align later
due to sentence type?  cleft sentences
syntactic boundary marked intonationally?
AP basic contour in U-final conditions: HiL*?

34. 4.2.2 DELAYED PRENUCLEAR PEAKS
‘it is thus the sun who is the strongest’

35. 5. CONCLUSIONS: BASIC CONTOUR OF APs
Basic contour of APs in Gallo-Romance: LHiLH*
Occitan AP = clitic group
French AP = clitic group or bigger
Prosodic marking of the AP:
Left: initial phrase accent LHi More research needed on
• conditions provoking it
• alignment
• features splitting up in clash conditions
Right: final pitch accent LH*
Occitan: lexically defined position
French: not lexically defined, but on last full syllable of a lexical word

36. 5. CONCLUSIONS: FRENCH SCHWA
Final schwa
S-French
• only etymological schwas
• schwas normally realized
N-French:
• etymological schwas normally not realized
• non etymological schwas may be inserted at the end of APs

37. 5. FURTHER RESEARCH: role of feet?
How are Occitan, S-French and N-French feet organized? In what may they differ?
Do feet play a role
in determining the AP maximal/minimal length?
in the appearance of initial accents?
in the assignment of prominences to syllables within APs?
in the alignment of tonal targets?

38. 5. FURTHER RESEARCH: intermediate phrases (ip)?
Different prosodic hierarchy in the 3 varieties?
Occitan: AP= clitic group > ip > IP > U LHiLH* T T% T#
S-French: AP > ip > IP > U LHiLH* T- T% T#
N-French: AP ? > IP > U LHiLH* ? T% T#
Evidence for ips in Occitan and S-French:
prosodic interdependence of certain APs
presence of IP-internal boundary tones
...
 Further research needed

39. ˌmeɾ.se.ˈpla mɛɾ.ˈsi.bo.ˈku ˌmɛʁ.si.bo.ˈku.ə

40. References
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Carton, Fernand et al. (1976): L’accent d’insistance. Emphatic Stress. - Ottawa: Didier.
Di Cristo, Albert (2009): Une approche intégrative des relations de l’accentuation au phrasé prosodique du français. - Journées CONSCILA. Regards croisés sur la prosodie du français. Paris, 27 mars
D’Imperio, Mariapaola et al. (2007): Investigating phrasing levels in French: Is there a difference between nuclear and prenuclear accents? - In: Camacho, J. et al. (eds.). Selected Papers from the 36th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins,
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41. Hualde, José Ignacio (to appear): Secondary stress and stress clash in Spanish. ‐ Proceedings of Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology 4.
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