Trudel Meisenburg

Prosody in Language Contact: Occitan and French

Occitan and French are two Gallo-Romance languages that have been in a diglossic situation in southern France for centuries. This close contact has led to interference at all levels, including prosody. This chapter presents results from a research project on prosodic structure and intonation in this contact situation. On one hand, Occitan has adopted the Accentual Phrase (AP), the basic phrasing unit of French, which may contain more than one lexical word and is characterized by a tonal bipolarity: it obligatorily ends in a (pitch) accent, and an initial rise may optionally mark its left edge. On the other hand, southern French recalls Occitan in its rhythmic patterns and relics of lexical stress. As far as intonation is concerned, most contours are common to both languages in statements and questions. However, statements of the obvious show different nuclear configurations in Occitan and in northern French; in southern French, the Occitan contour is also used, but when contact with Occitan is lost, northern-like contours may appear. Yes–no questions are mainly rising in both languages, but overt interrogative markers may license the use of falling contours. In wh-questions, while Occitan uses mainly falling contours, northern French has both rising and falling ones; southern French shows an intermediate situation, tending to one or the other pole as a function of the intensity of contact with Occitan. After describing the language contact situation and offering some background information about Occitan and French prosody, this chapter presents our findings on the prosodic structure and intonation of both languages, highlighting in particular the consequences of their mutual contact.