Rounding and height contrasts at the beginning of different prosodic constituents in French

International audienceVariations in the acoustic manifestations of the rounding and height contrasts in French vowels are investigated in different prosodic positions. Four speakers produced sentences containing the vowels /i, e, a, y, ø/ at the beginning of different prosodic constituents: Intonational Phrase, Accentual Phrase and Word. Acoustic cues for the rounding contrast (F2, F3, F3-F2) and for the vowel height contrast (F1) are found to be enhanced in Intonational Phrase initial positions