Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T03:09:16.442Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prosodic Rhythm in Ontario French*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2015

SVETLANA KAMINSKAÏA ,
JEFF TENNANT  and
ALEXANDER RUSSELL
SVETLANA KAMINSKAÏA*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo
JEFF TENNANT
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
ALEXANDER RUSSELL
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
*
Address for correspondence: Department of French Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, CanadaN2L 3G1 e-mail: skaminskaia@uwaterloo.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study of rhythm in Ontario French in local minority and majority contexts. To determine whether French in a minority situation shows a less syllabic rhythm due to English influence than it does in a majority situation, we used the following rhythm measurements: %V, ΔV, ΔC, VarcoV, VarcoC and nPVI-V. The results suggest no effect of language contact on the minority setting data where we find even more syllable-timed rhythm than in the majority variety. In addition, we observe that women and older speakers exhibit a more syllabic rhythm than men and younger speakers.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 183 - 208
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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.)

Footnotes

*

This analysis was conducted with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counsel of Canada, grant #410-2010-0822 to S. Kaminskaïa. We thank three anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped improve this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Abercrombie, D. (1967). Elements of General Phonetics. Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Arvaniti, A. (2009). Rhythm, timing and the timing of rhythm. Phonetica, 66: 46–63.Google Scholar
Arvaniti, A. (2012a). The usefulness of metrics in the quantification of speech rhythm. Journal of Phonetics, 40: 351–373.Google Scholar
Arvaniti, A. (2012b). Rhythm classes and speech perception. In: Niebuhr, O. (ed.), Understanding Prosody: The Role of Context, Function and Communication. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 75–92.Google Scholar
Arvaniti, A. and Ross, T. (2010). Rhythm classes and speech perception. Speech Prosody 2010 100882:1–4, downloaded December 5, 2012 from http://speechprosody2010.illinois.edu/papers/100887.pdfGoogle Scholar
Avanzi, M., Obin, N., Bordal, G. and Bardiaux, A. (2012). Speech Prosody of French Regional Varieties. In: Quiuwu, M., Ding, H. and Hirst, D. (eds), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 6 (May 22–25, 2012). Shanghai, China. http://www.speechprosody2012.org/uploadfiles/file/sp2012_submission_77.pdfGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P. and Weenink, D. (2011). PRAAT: Doing phonetics by computer. Accessed from www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praatGoogle Scholar
Boudreault, M. (1970). Le rythme en langue franco-canadienne. In: Léon, P., Faure, G. and Rigault, A. (eds), Prosodic Feature Analysis / Analyse des faits prosodiques. Studia Phonetica 3. Paris-Montréal-Bruxelles: Didier, pp. 21–31.Google Scholar
Carter, P. (2005). Quantifying rhythmic differences between Spanish, English, and Hispanic English. In: Gess, R. and Rubin, E. J. (eds), Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance Linguistics: Selected Papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 63–75.Google Scholar
Cichocki, W. (1997). Observations préliminaires sur le rythme en français acadien. In: Dubois, L. and Boudreau, A. (eds), Les Acadiens et leur(s) langue(s): quand le français est minoritaire. Moncton: Édition de l'Acadie, pp. 63–73.Google Scholar
Cichocki, W. and Lepetit, D. (1986). Intonational variability in language contact. F0 Declination in Ontarian French. In: Sankoff, D. (ed), Diversity and Diachrony. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 239–247.Google Scholar
Côté, M.-H. (2010). La longueur vocalique devant consonne allongeante en contexte final et dérivé en français laurentien. In: LeBlanc, C., Martineau, F. and Frenette, Y. (eds), Vues sur les français d'ici. Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 49–75.Google Scholar
Cumming, R. E. (2011). Perceptually informed quantification of speech rhythm in paiwise variability indices. Phonetica, 68: 256–277.Google Scholar
Dauer, R. M. (1983). Stress-timing and syllable-timing revisited. Journal of Phonetics, 11: 51–62.Google Scholar
Dauer, R. M. (1987). Phonetic and phonological components of language rhythm. Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Estonia, Tallinn), 447–450.Google Scholar
Dellwo, V. (2006). Rhythm and speech rate: A variation coefficient for deltaC. In: Karnowski, P. and Szigeti, I. (eds), Language and Language-Processing: Proceedings of the 38th Linguistic Colloquium, 231–241.Google Scholar
Dellwo, V. and Wagner, P. (2003). Relationships between speech rate and rhythm. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 471–474.Google Scholar
Durand, J., Laks, B. and Lyche, C. (2002). Synopsis du projet PFC, la Phonologie du Français Contemporain: Usages, Variétés et Structure. In: Durand, J., Laks, B. and Lyche, Ch. (eds), Bulletin PFC #1: Protocole, conventions et directions d'analyse, 5–7.Google Scholar
Durand, J., Laks, B. and Lyche, C. (2009). Le projet PFC: une source de données primaires structurées. In: Durand, J., Laks, B. and Lyche, C. (eds), Phonologie, variation et accents du français, Paris: Hermès, pp. 19–61.Google Scholar
Fagyal, Z. (2011). Rhythm types and the speech of working-class youth in a banlieue of Paris: the role of vowel elision and devoicing. In: Preston, D. R. and Niedzielski, N. (eds), Methods in Sociophonetics, Part I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 91–132.Google Scholar
Grabe, E. and Low, E. L. (2002). Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis. In: Warner, N. and Gussenhoven, C. (eds), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 7. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 515–546.Google Scholar
Goldman, J.-P. (2011). EasyAlign: a friendly automatic phonetic alignment tool under Praat. Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH 2011), Florence, Italy, 3233–3236.Google Scholar
Hoequist, Ch. E. (1983). Durational correlates of linguistic rhythm categories. Phonetica, 40: 19–31.Google Scholar
Kaminskaïa, S. (2013). Intonation of Ontario French in a minority setting: a study comparing two age groups. The French Review, 87.2: 107–127.Google Scholar
Kaminskaïa, S. (2014). Quantification of speech rhythm in Canadian French in a minority setting. The Italian Journal of Linguistics/Rivista di Linguistica 26.1: 93–134.Google Scholar
Kaminskaïa, S. (forthcoming). L'apport du débit à l’étude du rythme phonétique à l'aide des mesures rythmiques : une étude de deux variétés du français laurentien. Faits de langues.Google Scholar
Kaminskaïa, S., Tennant, J. and Russell, A. (2013). Approaches to analyzing prosodic rhythm in language contact: French in Ontario. In: Barysevich, Alena, D'Arcy, Alexandra and Heap, David (eds), Proceedings of Methods 14: Papers from the Fourteens International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 2011. Peter Lang, Bamberg Series. 3–13.Google Scholar
Knight, R.-A. (2011). Assessing the temporal reliability of rhythm metrics. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 41.3: 271–281.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change, 2.2: 205–254.Google Scholar
Larson-Hall, J. (2010). A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS. Routledge: New York.Google Scholar
Léon, P. (1983). Dynamique des changements phonétiques dans le français de France et du Canada. La Linguistique, 19.1: 13–28.Google Scholar
Low, E. L. (1998). Prosodic prominence in Singapore English. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Low, E. L. and Grabe, E. (1995). Prosodic patterns in Singapore English. In: Kjell, E. and Branderud, P. (eds), Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Vol. 3. Stockholm: KTH and Stockholm University, pp. 636–639.Google Scholar
Low, E. L., Grabe, E. and Nolan, F. (2000). Quantitative characterizations of speech rhythm: Syllable-timing in Singapore English. Language and Speech, 43.4: 377–401.Google Scholar
Mairano, P. and Romano, A. (2011). Rhythm metrics for 21 languages. In: Lee, W.-S. and Zee, E. (eds), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (August 17–21, 2011). Hong Kong, China.1318-1321. http://www.icphs2011.hk/resources/OnlineProceedings/RegularSession/Mairano/Mairano.pdfGoogle Scholar
Mougeon, R. (2004). Perspective sociolinguistique sur le français en Ontario. In: Coveney, A., Hintze, M.-A. and Sanders, C. (eds), Variation et francophonie. Paris: L'Harmattan, pp. 155–190.Google Scholar
Mougeon, R. and Beniak, E. (1991). Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact and Restriction: The Case of French in Ontario. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mougeon, R., Nadasdi, T. and Rehner, K. (2005). Contact induced linguistic innovations on the continuum of language use: The case of French in Ontario. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 8: 99–115.Google Scholar
Nadasdi, T. (2005). Le français en Ontario. In: Valdman, A., Auger, J. and Piston-Hatlen, D. (eds), Le français en Amérique du Nord: état présent. Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 99–115.Google Scholar
Nespor, I. (1990). On the rhythm parameter in phonology. In: Roca, I. (ed.), The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition. Foris: Dordrecht, pp. 157–175.Google Scholar
Nolan, F. and Asu, E. L. (2009). The pairwise variability index and coexisting rhythms in language. Phonetica, 66: 64–77.Google Scholar
Obin, N., Avanzi, M., Bordal, G. and Bardiaux, A. (2012). Regional variations of speech rhythm in French: in search of lost times. In: Ma, Q., Ding, H. and Hirst, D. (eds), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 6 (May 22–25, 2012). Shanghai, China. http://sprosig.isle.illinois.edu/sp2012/uploadfiles/file/sp2012_submission_224.pdfGoogle Scholar
Pasdeloup, V. (1991). Exploiting the secondary accent in a prosodic model for French synthesis. Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Aix-en-Provence). Vol. 2: 254–257.Google Scholar
Peterson, G. E. and Lehiste, I. (1960). Duration of syllable nuclei in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 32: 693–703.Google Scholar
Pike, K. (1945). The Intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Poiré, F. (2009). Le français canadien en milieu minoritaire: le cas du Sud-ouest ontarien. In: Durand, J., Laks, B. and Lyche, C. (eds), Phonologie, variation et accents du français. London: Hermès, pp. 153–173.Google Scholar
Poiré, F., Gurski, C. and Kelly, S. (2007). L'analyse phonétique à partir de petit corpus de parole spontanée: le cas des glissantes en français de Windsor, Canada. In: Detey, S. and Nouveau, D. (eds), Bulletin PFC 7 ERSS, UMR 5610. Toulouse : CNRS/Université Toulouse Le Mirail, pp. 341–358.Google Scholar
Poiré, F., Kaminskaïa, S. and Tremblay, R. (2010). Conséquences du contact avec l'anglais sur la réalisation de la liaison et du schwa en français de Windsor, Canada. Actes du XXVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Institut de Romanistique Leopold-Franzens-Universität, Innsbruck, Austria, September 2007, pp. 365–374.Google Scholar
Poiré, F., Kelly, S. and Williams, D. (2006). La réalisation des voyelles nasales en français de Windsor. Parole, 39/40: 259–284.Google Scholar
Poplack, S. (1989). Statut de langue et accommodation langagière le long d'une frontière linguistique. In: Mougeon, R. and Beniak, E. (eds), Le français parlé hors Québec: aperçu sociolinguistique. Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 127–151.Google Scholar
Prieto, P., del Mar Vanrell, M., Astruc, L., Payne, E. and Post, B. (2012). Phonotactic and phrasal properties of speech rhythm. Evidence from Catalan, English, and Spanish. Speech Communication, 54: 681–702.Google Scholar
Quené, H. (2008). Multilevel modeling of between-speaker and within-speaker variation in spontaneous speech tempo. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123: 1104–1113.Google Scholar
Ramus, F., Nespor, M. and Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73: 265–292.Google Scholar
Robinson, L. (1968). Étude du rythme syllabique en français canadien et en français standard. In: Léon, P. (ed.), Recherches sur la structure phonique du français canadien (Studia Phonetica 1). Paris-Montréal-Bruxelles: Didier, pp. 161–174.Google Scholar
Schwab, S. and Avanzi, M. (2015). Regional variation and articulation rate in French. Journal of Phonetics, 48: 96–105.Google Scholar
Tabachnick, B. G. and Fidell, L. S. (2001). Using Multivariate Statistics. (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Taylor, N. (2011). The French Rhythm of Canadian Native English Speakers. MA Research Paper, Linguistics Program, University of Western Ontario.Google Scholar
Tennant, J. (2011). Rythme prosodique et contact des langues dans le français ontarien. In: Marnieau, F. and Nadasdi, T. (eds), Le français en contact. Hommages à Raymond Mougeon. Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, pp. 355–373.Google Scholar
Thomas, A. (1986). La variation phonétique: cas du franco-ontarien, Montréal, Didier.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. R. and Carter, P. M. (2006). Prosodic rhythm and African American English. English World Wide, 27.3: 331–355.Google Scholar
Tremblay, R. (2007). La réalisation des contours mélodiques dans deux variétés du français en contact avec l'anglais. MA dissertation, University of Western Ontario.Google Scholar
Vinay, J.-P. (1950). Bout de la langue ou fond de la gorge? The French Review, 23.6: 489–98.Google Scholar
Walker, D. (1984). The Pronunciation of Canadian French. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.Google Scholar
Wenk, B. and Wioland, F. (1983). Is French really syllable timed? Journal of Phonetics, 10: 193–216.Google Scholar
White, L. (2014). Communicative function and prosodic form in speech timing. Speech Communication, 63–64: 38–54.Google Scholar
White, L. and Mattys, S. L. (2007a). Calibrating rhythm: First and second language studies. Journal of Phonetics, 35: 501–522.Google Scholar
White, L. and Mattys, S. L. (2007b). Rhythmic typology and variation in first and second languages. In: Prieto, P., Mascaro, J. and Solé, M.-J. (eds), Segmental and Prosodic Issues in Romance Phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 237–257.Google Scholar