Gradient linguopalatal variations due to a 4-level prosodic hierarchy in French

Many studies on various languages (English, Korean, French, Taiwanese, Estionian, Tamil) have shown that the articulation of segments in initial and final positions of prosodic constituents is strengthened and more resistant to coarticulation as a function of the hierarchical level of the prosodic. In French, studies have mainly dealt with V or C articulations in initial and final positions (Fougeron 2001, Tabain 2003), and V#C cross-boundary coarticulation (Tabain 2003). This study on French (Meynadier 2003, 2004) deals with the effects of a 4-level prosodic hierarchy on V and C articulations in initial and final positions, and on pre-boundary VC, post-boundary CV, cross-boundary CC, VC and CV coarticulation. Articulatory analysis is based on an EPG investigation of the spatio-temporal dynamics of linguopalatal gestures in aC#Ca sequences, where CC stands for /kl/, /lk/, /kt/ or /tk/. Prosodic boundaries (#) vary according to 4 increasing hierarchical levels: unaccented < accented < continuative intonational < conclusive intonational. This poster focuses on the nature of supralaryngeal correlates of prosodic constituency, and on the number and the type of hierarchical levels they distinguish across speakers. Articulatory results show that the higher the prosodic level, (i) the greater the duration and the openness of the pre-boundary vowel /a/; (ii) the tighter the temporal intergestural coordination inside the final rime aC#; (iii) the more reduced cross-boundary C#C coarticulation; (iv) the greater the C#(C)V cross-boundary interval. These prosodic-dependant articulatory correlates account for 3 main decreasing hierarchical distinctions bewteen prosodic levels: (i) intonational levels > lower levels; (ii) accentual levels > syllable/word level; (iii) continuative intonational level > conclusive intonational level