Bernard Tranel

Regulation of Voice Communication by Sensory Dynamics

People speak more loudly in a noisy room or when momentarily deafened and more softly in a quiet room or when sidetone is artificially increased. The effort to compensate for these changes in the signal‐to‐noise ratio, or to match directly changes in the intensity of a model, typically falls about halfway short (in decibel units). This is probably because a speaker considers that he has doubled his own vocal level in half as many decibels as it takes to double the loudness of the signal or the noise. More concisely, the Lombard‐reflex, sidetone‐penalty and cross‐modality matching functions have exponents of about one‐half because the exponent of the loudness scale is half that of the autophonic scale of voice level. This amounts to saying that the speaker matches changes in signal or in noise to keep the signal‐to‐noise ratio nearly constant, but he is misled by the disparity in the sensory operating characteristics of speaking and listening.

CVC light syllables, geminates and Moraic Theory

The functional equivalence of CVV and CVC syllables, as opposed to CV syllables, is a time-honoured observation holding true for numerous languages over a variety of phonological and morphological phenomena, including stress assignment (cf. Newman 1972 for a review). Traditionally, the opposition between the two types of syllables has been informally described by reference to syllable weight: CVV and CVC syllables are heavy, CV syllables are light (e.g. La Grasserie 1909: 31–32). It has also been observed, however, that in languages sensitive to the CV/CVV distinction, CVC syllables do not necessarily pattern with CVV syllables, but may instead pattern with CV syllables, thus counting as light rather than heavy (Hyman 1985: 5–6; McCarthy & Prince 1986: 32–34; Hayes 1989: 255–256).

French final consonants and nonlinear phonology

Abstract Within the broad framework of Nonlinear Phonology, the formal distinction required in the representations of latent and fixed final consonants in French has received an impressive array of competing implementations. This paper offers a critical survey of the major types of approaches proposed in skeletal, moraic and government theories.

A note of final consonant deletion in modern French

Abstract Standard generative treatments of Modern French phonology and morphology have posited the existence of a major phonological rule of final consonant deletion. The purpose of this paper is to provide an argument which should throw doubt on the psychological reality of such a rule. Data on the pronunciation of cardinal numbers (e.g. cinq ‘five’) are used to demonstrate that the standard analyses are inconsistent with the directionality of in-progress or recent changes which such words have undergone regarding their final consonant (e.g. cinq femmes ‘five women’ [se~fam] → [se~fam])). The implications of a rejection of the major phonological rule of final consonant deletion usually posited are briefly investigated; it is suggested that the facts customarily accounted for by such a rule (e.g. alternations of the types petit [pəti]/petite [pətit] ‘small’ (masc./fem.); il sort [ilsɔr]/il sorte [ilsɔrt] ‘he leaves’ (indicative/subjunctive present); vie [vi]/vital [vital] ‘life’/‘vital’) can be satisfactorily handled in other ways (e.g. morphophonological rules, via-rules), which are in some cases required independently of the postulation of the rule challenged.

The Sounds of French: An Introduction

Preface Special note to English speaking students learning French Organization of the book The language of reference Acknowledgments Part I. Introductory Concepts: 1. Orthography, pronunciation, and phonetic notation 2. Basic notations of phonetics Part II. Vowels and Glides: 3. Vowel systems 4. Distribution of vowels 5. Nasal vowels 6. E 7. Glides Part III. Consonants: 8. Consonantal systems 9. L and R 10. Double consonants and final consonants 11. Liaison Part IV. Suprasegmentals: 12. Stress and intonation Part V. Appendices Bibliography.