Intonation & Accentuation

Intonation

• The same phrase can be pronounced differently, depending upon whether the speaker wants to indicate his feelings – impatience, surprise, fear, politeness, etc.
• Intonation is often described as the melodic curve of the phrase. One speaks of the ‘melody’ of the phrase. Intonation is a characteristic of prosody that is applied to the whole phrase and not simply to a word or group of words.
• Distinctive characteristics of intonation
  • Phoneticians distinguish the following:-
    • The height of the voice – is it rising or falling, etc.
    • The length and intensity of the sound
    • The melodic curve
• The function of intonation
  • Modality
    • Commands
    • Questions
  • Syntax

In some cases intonation alone distinguishes the syntactic or semantic components of the phrase. Compare:-

	On le	remontait,	il	redescendait…	(enumeration)
	2	3	2	3
	On le	remontait,	il	redescendait.	(subordination)
	2	3	2	1

In the absence of any other indices, only intonation allows the interlocutor to understand the logical sequence of the speaker’s ideas.

• • Other
    • When part of the phrase is in parentheses, the intonation suddenly descends to a lower level.

Les cours que	je suis	(l’économie et	l’histoire	sont mes	préférés
2	2	1	1	2	1

• • • If the subject follows a ‘groupe ou mot présentatif’, the intonation of the subject is stable. The intonation of the ‘groupe ou mot présentatif’ will rise or fall, depending on whether the speaker is making a statement or asking a question, etc.

	Il est	à moi,	ce	livre
	3	2	2	2
	Il	vient	ce	café?
	2	3	3	3

Accentuation

• Accentuation is the highlighting of one syllable in a word or group of words.
  • In the non-linguistic sense, ‘accent’ means any pronunciation that deviates from the norm.
  • This highlighting is achieved in particular by the quality of the vowel of the syllable, which is pronounced with more intensity and perhaps for a longer duration than is normal.
  • Accentuation is noted phonetically by the sign ́ placed before the start of the syallable.
• The tonic accent
  • Always affects the last syllable of the ‘rhythmic group’
• The ‘accent d’insistance’
  • May be introduced by the speaker to indicate changes of mood
  • Placed on a syllable that would not normally be stressed
  • Can be in addition to the tonic accent or replace it
  • Distinctive characteristics
    • The introduction of an additional accent where one would not normally occur gives a ‘syncopated rhythm’ to phrases.
    • The syllable bearing the ‘accent d’insistance’ changes quantatively.
      • The vowel is lengthened an pronounced with greater intensity of voice.
      • The consonant is often ‘doubled’
    • Public speakers have a tendency to emphasise first syllables. This is particularly noticeable in the media.
    • Another characteristic is to detach and accentuate each syllable.
  • Function
    • The main function of the ‘accent d’insistance’ is to contrast different words in the sentence.
    • It is overused, particularly in teaching and the media and is also becoming a banal feature in other fields, such as politics.
• The rhythmic groupe

A group of words ending in an accentuated syllable and preceded by one or more unstressed syllable, which forms a unity of sense.

Linguistics & socio-linguistics compared

Linguistics ‘l’étude de la langue en elle-même et pour elle-même (Saussure)

Covers study of:-

• Phonology: the description of sounds used in a particular language.
  • Not all sounds which the human voice is capable of using are used in all languages
  • How the sounds are strung together – combinations are possible in one language which are not possible in another
  • Sounds are described by reference to their
    • Point of articulation
    • Quality
• Morphology: the affixes (prefixes, infixes & suffixes) and other changes to words which indicated the grammatical function of the word (verb endings)
• Syntax: the accepted order of words in a sentence – French is an S.V.O. language
• Grammar = morphology + syntax
• Semantics: the study of the meaning of words
• Discourse & Text: the way speech/writing assembles ideas arguments etc.
• Pragmatics: the study of the language in its context; the practical function of language; the conventions of language.
• Semiotics – the use of gestures, facial expressions, other body language, accentuation and intonation to reinforce meaning

Socio-linguistics: the study of language in society.

• Language can inform – state facts
• Language can denote –
  • Discourse/text can give the listener/reader can give information as to the speaker’s/writer’s
    • Provenance
    • Social class
    • Background (urban/rural)
    • Age
    • Level of education
    • Sex
    • Religion
  • This is done by
    • The sound of the language (regional accent etc.)
    • Choice of vocabulary
    • Sentence construction

A speaker/writer may choose to stress or try to make less obvious any one of the above in order to show either greater solidarity with or distance from his listeners/readers.

Pronunciation diagram

Sex

3 interacting oppositions are involved in discussion of the role of sex in differences of language use in French:

1) biological sex, and hence a difference in language use by men and women

2) grammatical gender, where the language has an inbuilt system which does not wholly match biological gender

3) social gender, or language usage or attitudes which are coloured by or correlate with the social roles of women and men or with socially determined views.

The male/female biological opposition is not always reflected by the masculine/feminine grammatical opposition of French nouns: a number of nouns in French have feminine grammatical gender but refer to males or vice versa, such as:

la sentinelle – sentinel

la recrue – recruit

un mannequin – model

un laideron – ugly woman.

Masculine/feminine distinction can not always be heard, eg. Past participle endings. There are some examples of feminine forms in the popular language that skipped and instead the masculine form is used.

The French language to some degree reflects sexist attitudes through gender allocation:

l’ocean is larger than la mer, le fleuve is larger than la riviere, le ruisseau is larger than la source, le jour contains a ‘male principle’ by opposition to la nuit, likewise le soleil and la lune, and two of the four elements – le feu and l’air as opposed to la terre and l’eau.

In names of professions, the masculine form is often the only one to exist, and the feminine form signifies ‘wife of’:

ambassadeur – ambassadrice, president – presidente, marechal – marechale, general – generale.

In English and in German, we make a clearer distinction by assigning an entirely different title like First Lady. The French system is honorific implying that she doesn’t enjoy the title in her own right but by virtue of her husband. It also complicates matters such as when a woman achieves the rank of captain, and must be referred to as le capitaine as la capitaine would mean that she’s just married to a captain.

Women following these occupations in their own right are sometimes referred to by the use of the feminine article, or by the addition of femme:

le/la professeur, ministre, maire

un avocat/ un avocat-femme, un ecrivain-femme, un auteur-femme

un docteur/ un femme-docteur, une femme-chauffeur, une femme-policier, une femme-savant, une femme-chirurgien.

In English using the female form can be derogatory and semi-insulting, for instance poetess has connotations of the work being of lower quality of that of a poet.

In some cases the ‘lower’ profession has both a masculine and feminine form, while the ‘higher’ activity has a masculine form only:

l’institeur and l’institutrice but le professeur

le directeur and la directrice but le Recteur

When men enter professions previously undertaken only by women, the title is ‘elevated’, often by creating a pseudo-scientific neologism from Greek or Latin roots for the male form:

la sage-femme but le maieuticien.

Question of feminisation of titles was debated in the mid 1980’s, and feminisation was opposed because:

1) Grammatical and sexual gender did not concide

2) feminised forms were laughable

3) women felt more valued by using the masculine form.

The stereotypical male language is virile, containing heavier use of slang, insults, word-play and a mastery of technical, political, intellectual, and sporting registers. In the 1978 study, it was found that in mixed conversation the males dominated, but today the same cannot be said. The female stereotype holds negative connotations of purism, uncreativity, taste for hyperbole, mastery of the registers of minor domains, timid and non-assertive speech, chit-chat, incapacity to manipulate abstract concepts, hyper-correction, fear of non-standard uses of words.

Irigaray (1987) demonstrated that male and female perceptions differ, as do their language use.

Women’s use of language is generally more conservative except with a typical or non-typical use of NE, although this is relative to their social class and age.

Age

In very general terms, older people tend to maintain the standard phonology and patterns of speaking, more noticeable with vowels.

Morphology is gleaming from a word its grammatical meaning by looking at endings normally, such as whether it is singular/plural, what tense it is, and the person. It is the system by which the grammatical function of a word in a sentence is indicated.

Syntax is the excepted order of words in a sentence.

Lexis is the vocabulary.

Phonology is the sound of the language.

Linguistic studies always look at these three aspects – phonology, morpho-syntax, and lexis.

Changing demographics in France – aging population, birthrate is declining combined with people living longer.

Children

Children’s language – comes from three influences -mother and immediate family; peer group; school and State. These three turn into – maternal (regional/dialect) language; spoken, informal and popular French; written, formal and public usage of the norm.

A child will generalise. Their language use will grow and develop, whilst at the same time this development can be seen as the elimination of errors.

Tiers of French – academic/literary, soutenu, standard, courant, familier, populaire. Francais populaire originates from a working class/immigrant/shady background, and is adopted into familiar by adolescents and then on into higher classes.

Adolescents

Specialised or over development in vocabulary areas that are relevant or important to them. They will focus on the familiar and popular vocabulary relevant to their interests: Muller (1985) drew attention to juveniles’ awareness of the vocabulary of areas such as sport, transport, leisure, drugs and music.

Verlan is a slang formation that recurs in use, yet the words and phrases that it generates stay in fashion for a brief life cycle. Adolescents are the pioneers of the uses and occurrences of slang. Slang words themselves can very rarely undergo “verlanisation”. Verlan in English is semantic rather than constructional – in French the actual word is inverted like femme turning into meuf; in English the meaning is flipped, so wicked can mean awesome/great.

The turn around time with popular vocabulary is generational and short. Words and expressions fade in and out of fashion very rapidly to the extent that mapping their usage can be borderline impossible.

Adolescents use this language to differentiate themselves from older and younger age ranges, as well as being a basic form of encryption for their communication. They chose to use it to show solidarity with their peer group – by being at the front-line of vocabulary innovation and evolution they lead the way for the younger age ranges, whilst maintaining a distance from them by staying so far ahead. The prestige they feel for using this type of popular language is the same as that felt by adults for their use of correct and formal French. The main difference between adult and adolescent communication is lexical, as phonetically and syntactically (vocalic and consonantal elision, infrequent liaisons, avoidance of inversions etc) they are largely concordant.

Adults

Older speakers are likely to be more conservative, pedantic, and linguistically defensive than younger ones. In a country where the population is ageing, such attitudes are likely to become more pronounced. Characteristic of linguistic purism is the belief that the language of one’s own generation is better than that of the younger, and often, that the language of one’s parents or grandparents represents some golden age of purity. There exist forms and styles which are characteristic of older generations, most referring to the social reality of those times. Dialect can be said to go through dilution down generations. Dialect is not perceived as being useful, and is not being transmitted down generations in the same way as it was a century ago. There is a marked difference in the use of posterior and interior vowel duration: posterior comes from the front of the mouth and sounds like a northern English A, interior comes from the back of the mouth / throat and sounds more like a southern English A.

On a graph charting the use of NE – the differences between the age ranges of 14-21 and 51-64 and corresponding to their social class and sex, the most interesting difference was between upper class females of the two age ranges, as the female of 14-21 had an extremely low usage of NE in their speech. This boils down to gender more than age. In all classes, the use of NE was more frequent in the older age range. Working class older women tend to use NE far less than working class males.

The older and more rural demographics are more likely to use dialects and alternative regional words. Their syntax is likely to be closer to the norm and much more fixed in its usage.

Flemish

French Flemish is now seen as rural, spoken by between 40,000 and 100,000 rural dwellers near the Belgian border. Since standard Dutch is the prestige language of Holland, with a full range of abstract and technical terminology and a codified grammar and lexicon, the Westhoek (region around Dunkirk) dialect suffers both from prestigious French and also from prestigious Dutch, and hence remains an inferior and little-prized variety, as in evidenced by the support local language associations offer for standard Dutch in public life. Informal social gatherings keep it alive. Like all regional languages in France, its use was forbidden in school, but was taught after 1982 and was officially recognised for teaching in 1983. Today it is realised that no children in France have Flemish as their mother tongue and Wardhaugh (1987) considers its extinction in France “imminent”.

Corsican

French is the official language for all administrative purposes, with Corsican still a living spoken form for intimate and domestic uses, although this position is somewhat confused with the use of spoken Corsican in some aspects of public life, and its acceptance in the educational sphere. Since the use of Corsican is seen as a symbol of and for autonomists wishing to establish more regional autonomy, language attitudes are associated with political attitudes and aspirations, themselves often based on economic problems.
Actual language usage on the island however shows a high degree of language mixing, with both French and Corsican heavily influenced by each other. The regional French is heavily accented, with considerable lexical borrowing and uncertainty over genders (eg. des ciseaux belles), while Corsican itself has necessarily been greatly influenced. Standard Italian (ie the formal written variety) is also a linguistic fact, and the influence of large numbers of Italian tourists and the easy reception of Italian television affects the total scene.

Catalan

Sociolinguistically, despite the diglossic situation in which Catalan found itself during most of the nineteenth century, particularly evident in the French-language policy of the time, there has been a degree of language loyalty and language maintenance affected mainly by the strong Catalan renaissance in Spain, and hence some restoration of Catalan in ‘official’ functions. As a consequence, Catalan is now more used in public life than before, and the success of the strong movements in education, where Catalan is used both as an object of teaching and a vehicle for learning other subjects, have had a major effect on its prestige and acceptability. Likewise, Catalan usage in the media and economic life, where the Catalunya authorities use Catalan in trade and administration between the two countries, has led to rather more equality of prestige between the two languages than heretofore. The situation is hence dynamic and somewhat fluid, and the future is less clear than in most other French regions.

Breton

Breton is a Celtic language similar to Welsh and Scottish or Irish Gaelic. Two main dialect groups exist: KLT (Cornouaille, Leon, Tregor) and Vannetais, with considerable difference between them. A unified authography was finally adopted in 1941. However, a different one was adopted by the Ministry of Education in 1955, and a third, known as the ‘interdialectal’ version, was set up in 1975. Breton is declining in use rapidly. The number of people using the dialects are around the 500,000 mark. The sociolinguistic situation is complex: the region has a distinctive character, traditions and history, but is, and its population feels it to be, crushed by the political, economic, cultural and intellectual power and attractiveness of Paris. Its language, the symbol of its ethnic identity, suffers: it is no longer used for all functions and is limited to intimate family situations, apart from some remains of commercial and economic exchanges, in selling fish in the large and well-organised markets for example. It lacks prestige and has lost its role as key to social mobility and is hence little used by mothers and daughters. Elogoet (1973):
“It is the language of daily agricultural labour… in the cafe, at the market. For adults, Breton is pre-eminent in daily life, but its use by the young is declining. Above the age of twenty, Breton is the language of the men; those who are younger use Breton or French, and the switching is a complex affair. The ’sex’ variable is important: the father speaks to his son in Breton, the daughter uses French to her mother at home. On Sunday after Church, in town, it is inconceivable and even incorrect for a young man to talk to the girls in Breton. Outside intimate and family groups, only French is used, while in the family parents address their parents in Breton and their children in French.

Basque

Sociolinguistically the Basque region is in a situation of language maintenance, with heavy pressure from French leading most probably to its eventual disappearance, although this possibility is countered both by growing regional interest and particularly by the strong Basque region in Spain and its regional autonomy.

The earliest surviving texts in Basque date only from the late Middle Ages. Basque is a unique language, but with some identified similarities with Asian languages. A number of widely divergent dialects exist, although identifiable groupings distinguish each of the three northern provinces. The Basque Language Academy, founded in 1918, and others have effected some rationalisation and other aspects of language corpus planning, and Spanish Basque is now standardised. Basque has borrowed heavily from Spanish and French for technical and abstract terminology. In France there are said to be between 80,000 and 100,000 speakers of Basque, approximately 40 percent of the population of the Atlantic Pyrenees.