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Lexical stress is an essential element of prosody. Mastering this prosodic feature is challenging, especially in a stress-free foreign language for individuals native to a stress-fixed language, a phenomenon referred to as stress deafness. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we elucidated the neuronal underpinnings of stress processing in a stress-free foreign language, and determined the underlying mechanism of stress deafness. Here, we contrasted behavioral and hemodynamic responses revealed by native speakers of a stress-free (German;N= 38) and a stress-fixed (French;N= 47) language while discriminating pairs of words in a stress-free foreign language (Spanish). Consistent with the stress deafness phenomenon, French speakers performed worse than German speakers in discriminating Spanish words based on cues of stress but not of vowel. Whole-brain analyses revealed widespread bilateral networks (cerebral regions including frontal, temporal and parietal areas as well as insular, subcortical and cerebellar structures), overlapping with the ones previously associated with stress processing within native languages. Moreover, our results provide evidence that the structures pertaining to a right-lateralized attention system (i.e., middle frontal gyrus, anterior insula) and the Default Mode Network modulate stress processing as a function of the proficiency level. In comparison to the German speakers, the French speakers activated the attention system and deactivated the Default Mode Network to a stronger degree, reflecting attentive engagement, likely a compensatory mechanism underlying the “stress-deaf” brain. The mechanism modulating stress processing argues for a rightward lateralization, indeed overlapping with the location covered by the dorsal stream but remaining unspecific to speech.

Different methods to acquire a language can contribute differently to learning success. In the present study we tested the success of L2 stress contrasts acquisition, when ab initio learners were taught or not about the theoretic nature of L2 stress contrasts. In two 4-hour perceptual training methods, French-speaking listeners received either (a) explicit instructions about Spanish stress patterns and perception activities commonly used in L2 pronunciation courses or (b) no explicit instructions and a unique perception activity, a shape/word matching task. Results showed that French-speaking listeners improved their ability to identify and discriminate stress contrasts in Spanish after training. However, there was no significant difference between explicit and non-explicit training nor was there an effect on stress processing under different phonetic variability conditions. This suggests that in L2 stress acquisition, non-explicit training may benefit ab initio learners as much as explicit instruction and activities used in L2 pronunciation courses.

Foreign-accented speech typically deviates segmentally and suprasegmentally from native-accented speech. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the role of amplitude envelope (ENV), segment duration (DUR), and speech rate (SR) on Italian listeners' ability to identify native-accented Italian in utterances produced by Zurich German speakers. In experiment 1, listeners judged in a two-alternative forced-choice perception task which of the two stimuli in a trial they perceived as more native-like. Stimuli in each trial only varied in ENV and DUR, which were retrieved either from a native Italian speaker [first language (L1) donor] or from a German speaker of Italian [second language (L2) donor]. Results revealed that listeners make use of both DUR and ENV to identify the more native-like stimuli, but the effect of ENV was more subtle. In experiment 2, SR differences (resulting from native and non-native segment duration differences in experiment 1) were normalized for. It was found that this drastically reduced the effect of segment durations in terms of perceived nativeness; however, the ENV effect still remained. This was not the case in a control group of listeners without competence in Italian. Though effects were subtle, the study shows that ENV cues contribute to the percept of nativeness in L2 speech.

Listeners in fixed-stress languages are less sensitive in processing stress contrasts in a second language with contrastive stress (stress 'deafness'). We investigated whether native speakers of French (fixed-stress language) can acquire the ability to distinguish stress contrasts in Spanish (free-stress language). In behavioral experiments, we found that French listeners were able to improve their ability to discriminate stress contrasts in Spanish after a 4-h training. This indicates that French listeners' stress detection disadvantage can be reduced by a short exposure to L2 stress contrasts. An ERP experiment administered after the training evidenced that the larger the P3b amplitude, the better the listeners' training outcome. In contrast, listeners' performance was not reflected by the N2b amplitude. In other words, listeners with high performance after training showed similar auditory sensitivity to stress in comparison to listeners with poor performance, but they better maintained stress information in working memory, as indicated by the larger amplitude of P3b. The present research indicates that individual differences in working memory processing should be considered in the acquisition of second language prosody.

Multiethnolects have been observed in (Western) Europe for about 30 years, also in Zurich – the biggest city in German- speaking Switzerland, characterized by ethnic and linguistic diversity. Speech rhythm appears to be a salient feature of several European multiethnolects and has been described as a ‘staccato’ rhythm. However, a sociophonetic investigation of rhythm in Swiss German multiethnolects is lacking so far. To investigate rhythmic characteristics of multiethnolectal Zurich German, we recorded read speech of 48 adolescents of two schools in Zurich. Forty adolescents from a third school rated speech samples to indicate how multiethnolectal the speakers sound on a 7-point Likert scale. These rating scores were then correlated with various rhythm metrics (%V, ΔC, ΔV; varcoC, varcoV; nPVI-C, nPVI-V). We found significant correlations between vowel variability measurements and rating scores as well as between syllable rate and rating scores. In contrast, we found no corre- lations with consonantal variability measurements. Our results support the view that multiethnolectal Zurich German uses less vowel reduction in unstressed syllables which leads to the impression of a ‘staccato’ rhythm of this variety.

Three experiments on the perception of lexical stress in Spanish (a free-stress language) by speakers of French (a fixed-stress language) are discussed in this chapter. The main goal of these experiments is to further investigate the effect of an ‘accentual filter’ that may lead to a stress ‘deafness’ in native speakers of a fixed-stress language. Taken together, the results of the three experiments lead to the conclusion that French speakers are not only sensitive to the acoustic cues that convey stress prominences in Spanish, but are also able, after a short training, to encode and retrieve the accentual information in a small lexicon of Spanish pseudowords. However, it appears that French listeners do not always rely on the same acoustic cues as the ones used by native Spanish speakers and that their representations of the accentual patterns seem to be less flexible than the native ones.

Notre recherche porte sur l’effet de l’expertise musicale sur la perception de variations de frequence fondamentale (f0) en langue maternelle (francais) et langue etrangere (espagnol). Les resultats de nos etudes ont montre, d’une part, que l’expertise musicale favorise la discrimination de variations de f0 dans des sons purs et dans des mots en francais. D’autre part, ils ont revele qu’elle facilite, en langue etrangere, la discrimination de contrastes accentuels realises, entre autres, par une variation de f0.

The perception of stress is highly influenced by listeners' native language. In this research, the authors examined the effect of intonation and talker variability (here: phonetic variability) in the discrimination of Spanish lexical stress contrasts by native Spanish (N = 17), German (N = 21), and French (N = 27) listeners. Participants listened to 216 trials containing three Spanish disyllabic words, where one word carried a different lexical stress to the others. The listeners' task was to identify the deviant word in each trial (Odd-One-Out task). The words in the trials were produced by either the same talker or by two different talkers, and carried the same or varying intonation patterns. The German listeners' performance was lower compared to the Spanish listeners but higher than that of the French listeners. French listeners performed above chance level with and without talker variability, and performed at chance level when intonation variability was introduced. Results are discussed in the context of the stress "deafness" hypothesis.

Dans cette etude, nous examinons les proprietes accentuelles d’une variete de francais appelee ‘francais federal’, parlee par des locuteurs d’origine suisse alemanique ayant emigre en Suisse romande. Pour ce faire, nous examinons les productions lues et spontanees de 4 groupes de 4 locuteurs chacun : 2 groupes de locuteurs natifs (originaires de Paris et de Neuchâtel), et deux groupes de locuteurs non-natifs (des Suisses allemands etablis en Suisse romande depuis au moins une vingtaine d’annees, originaires des cantons de Zurich et de Berne). Lors de l’analyse du corpus, nous nous concentrons sur trois grands types de phenomenes : la taille des groupes accentuels, le respect des regles phonologiques de bonne formation du groupe accentuel (ALIGN-HEAD et *CLASH) et la proportion d’accents secondaires realises en position initiale de mot. Si les resultats obtenus apres examen des deux premiers parametres vont dans le sens de l’hypothese selon laquelle les locuteurs du francais federal adaptent le systeme phonologique du francais a leur propre systeme, nos resultats ne permettent pas de convoquer l’hypothese du transfert en vue d’expliquer la forte proportion d’accents secondaires rencontree dans les productions des locuteurs non-natifs.

The aim of this study is to examine some prosodic features of a variety of L2 French commonly called "français fédéral", which is a variety of French spoken by people who have a Swiss German dialect as L1. We compared the data of 4 groups of 4 speakers: 2 groups of French native speakers (from Neuchâtel in Switzerland and from Paris) and 2 groups of 4 Swiss German French speakers (from Bern and Zurich but living in Neuchâtel for at least 20 years). The data were semi-automatically processed. We examined two prosodic properties: articulation rate and accentuation. Our findings suggest that: (i) native speakers from Paris articulate faster than native speakers from Neuchâtel; (ii) non-native speakers articulate as fast as the native speakers of the corresponding variety; (iii) "français fédéral" shares several features with a lexical accentuation system rather than with a supra-lexical accentuation system.

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The chapter starts out with a reminder of the essential distinction between objective, prescriptive, and subjective norms. It goes on to summarize the main historical stages in the emergence of a standard in metropolitan France, its expansion in scope, and the rise of multi-centric norms beyond the Hexagon, illustrated with the vowel inventories typical of Belgian French, Swiss French, Midi French, Central-African French, and Laurentian French. The second half of the chapter shifts from a production-oriented to a perception-oriented approach to the spoken norm, and reports the results of recent studies in French perceptual dialectology, some of which were carried out within the PFC project (Phonology of Contemporary French). It concludes that Reference French(es) do exist, but may vary depending on the communities and the objectives at stake.

The acoustic and perceptual correlates of stress in Spanish have been usually studied at the word level, but few investigations have considered them in a wider context. The aim of the present work is to assess the role of fundamental frequency, duration and amplitude in the perception of lexical stress in Spanish when the word is part of a sentence. An experiment has been carried out in which the participants (39 listeners, 20 from Costa Rica and 19 from Spain) had to identify the position of the lexical stress in words presented in isolation and in the same words embedded in sentences. The stimuli in which the position of the stress was not correctly identified have been acoustically analysed to determine the cause of identification errors. Results suggest that the perception of lexical stress in words within a sentence depends on the stress pattern and on the relationship between the values of the acoustic parameters responsible for the prominence of the stressed vowel and those corresponding to the adjacent unstressed vowels. Los correlatos acústicos y perceptivos del acento en español se han estudiado habitualmente en el ámbito de la palabra, pero son escasas las investigaciones que los hayan considerado en un contexto más amplio. El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar el papel de la frecuencia fundamental, la duración y la amplitud en la percepción del acento léxico en español cuando la palabra se encuentra en una oración. Se ha llevado a cabo un experimento en el que los participantes (39 oyentes, 20 procedentes de Costa Rica y 19, de España) debían identificar la posición del acento en palabras presentadas de forma aislada y en las mismas palabras situadas en un contexto oracional. En los casos de identificación incorrecta de la posición del acento, se han analizado acústicamente los estímulos para determinar la causa de los errores. Los resultados apuntan a que la percepción del acento léxico de las palabras en el contexto de una oración depende del patrón acentual y de la relación que puede establecerse entre los valores de los parámetros acústicos que marcan la prominencia de la vocal tónica y los de las vocales átonas adyacentes.

RÉSUMÉCette recherche vise à examiner empiriquement l'idée commune que les Suisses romands parlent lentement. Nous avons comparé, en parole lue, diverses variables temporelles produites par des locuteurs provenant d'une variété régionale française (Brunoy en Ile-de-France) et de deux variétés régionales suisses romandes (Neuchâtel et Nyon), et ce, en tenant compte de l’âge et du sexe des locuteurs. Les résultats montrent, d'une part, que, parmi les diverses variables temporelles, seule la vitesse d'articulation permet de distinguer les locuteurs des trois variétés régionales. D'autre part, ils soulignent le rôle différent, selon la variété régionale, que jouent l’âge et le sexe des locuteurs dans la production de la vitesse d'articulation.

The present research examines the impact of listeners’ own rate of speech production on their perception of speech rate. We recorded 28 native French speakers reading a passage at normal, fast and slow rates. The same speakers then assessed the rate of production of these samples by all speakers and at all rates (normal, fast and slow), using a magnitude estimation task. We show that there is an inverse relationship between listeners’ own rate of production and their judgment of rate, so that listeners with slower rates tend to overestimate sample rates relative to faster speakers. This effect of listeners’ own rate was present in the magnitude estimation results at slow and normal rates, but not at fast rates. Furthermore, listeners with a slow rate are more sensitive to rate differences within a given rate category (normal, fast and slow). The listener’s own rate should therefore be considered as a critical factor in speech rate perception.

How is disability, in particular visual impairment, used in romance fiction? The article explores the use of blindness and the loss of sight in two historical romances by American author Teresa Medeiros. While in The Bride and the Beast (2001) the inability to see is caused by darkness and leads to insight and (self-)knowledge, the hero of Yours until Dawn (2004) has been blinded in battle. Although the latter contains a number of similarities to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), a comparison with the Victorian classic shows that Medeiros rejects various dominant cultural stereotypes about visual impairment and disability such as the disempowerment and perceived helplessness of blind characters.

The aim of this paper is to provide an acoustical study of penultimate accentuation in French. We compare stretches of spontaneous speech produced by four Swiss speakers (from Neuchâtel, considered as the speakers of the regional variety) with the productions of a four Parisian speakers (considered as the speakers of the standard variety). The results of our study lead us to conclude that penultimate accentuation is less frequent in Parisian French than in Swiss French. More interestingly, the study reveals that the penultimate accentuation manifests different acoustic correlates when comparing the two varieties: while French speakers use mostly melodic cues solely to mark their penultimate syllable as prominent, speakers from Neuchâtel tend to prefer to use durational cues to do so.

El objetivo de esta investigación es describir las variables temporales en dos variantes del español: una de Costa Rica (San José) y la otra de España (Barcelona). De manera más específica, se examinan, con una perspectiva comparativa, la velocidad de elocución, el número de pausas, su duración y la velocidad de articulación en una tarea de lectura en voz alta. También se estudia el efecto de la edad y del sexo del locutor en la velocidad de articulación, así como el efecto de la longitud del enunciado, ya que se ha demostrado que estos factores afectan a la velocidad de articulación en otras lenguas como el francés, el inglés o el neerlandés. Los resultados principales del presente trabajo indican, por una parte, que los locutores costarricenses realizan pausas más largas que los locutores españoles y, por otra parte, que los locutores de las dos variantes presentan una velocidad de articulación similar, que se ve afectada por factores tanto extralingüísticos (i.e. la edad o la profesión de los locutores) como lingüísticos (i.e. longitud del enunciado).

The present research aims at determining to what extent an orthographic error related to the accent mark affects the visual recognition of Spanish words. For this, we conducted two experiments of visual lexical decision (with no word production), in which Spanish-speaking participants were instructed to ignore the presence or the absence of the accent mark. Stimuli were composed of words originally without accent mark (OrNA for ‘originally no accent’; Experiment 1) and words originally with an accent mark (OrWA for ‘originally with accent’; Experiments 1 and 2). OrNA words were presented in three conditions: correctly spelled (e.g., dulce ‘sweet’), with an added accent mark on the lexically stressed vowel ( dúlce) and with a misplaced accent mark on the lexically non-stressed vowel ( dulcé). Along the same line, OrWA words were also presented in three conditions: correctly spelled (e.g., lápiz ‘pen’), without the accent mark (lapiz) and with a misplaced accent mark (lapíz). Taken together, the results showed that the accent mark plays a role in the visual word recognition in Spanish. More specifically, the addition and/or the misplacement of an accent mark significantly slow down the visual recognition of the words, whereas the omission of the accent mark does not. The findings are discussed within the framework of dual-route models. Esta investigación tiene como meta determinar en qué medida un error ortográfico relativo al acento gráfico (i.e., tilde) afecta al reconocimiento visual de las palabras en español. Para ello, realizamos dos experimentos de decisión léxica visual (sin producción de las palabras), en los que los participantes tenían que ignorar la presencia o ausencia del acento gráfico. Los estímulos se componían de palabras originalmente sin acento gráfico (OrNA para ‘originally no accent’; Experimento 1) y palabras originalmente con acento gráfico (OrWA para ‘originally with accent’; Experimentos 1 y 2). Las palabras OrNA se presentaron en tres condiciones: correctamente ortografiadas (p. ej., dulce), con un acento gráfico en la vocal tónica (dúlce) y con un acento mal colocado en la vocal átona (dulcé). Asimismo, las palabras OrWA también se presentaron en tres condiciones: correctamente ortografiadas (p. ej., lápiz), sin el acento gráfico (lapiz) y con el acento gráfico mal colocado (lapíz). Los resultados mostraron que el acento gráfico desempeña un papel en el reconocimiento visual de las palabras. Más específicamente, la adición y/o la mala colocación del acento gráfico ralentizan significativamente el reconocimiento visual de las palabras, mientras que la omisión del acento gráfico no lo dificulta. Discutimos los resultados dentro del marco de los modelos de doble ruta.

The present investigation deals with regional variation and articulation rate in French. The articulation rate in read speech and in spontaneous speech was examined in seven variants of French: Paris and Lyon in France; Tournai and Liege in Belgium; Geneva, Neuchâtel and Nyon in Switzerland. Results showed that Swiss speakers articulate at a lower syllable rate than French speakers (especially Parisian speakers) and Belgian speakers, independently of the speaking style (reading or conversation). This finding confirms that articulation rate varies regionally. Moreover, results revealed that extra-linguistic and linguistic factors, such as the speaker's age and gender, the speaking style, the utterance length and the articulation rate of the adjacent inter-pause chunk, also affect articulation rate.

Non-native speakers of a second language often report that the speech ratein that language is faster than the rate in their own language. So as to comparespeech rate perception by native (French) and non-native (Swiss German) speakers,and to determine if rate estimation by non-native speakers is correlated withtheir level of comprehension, we asked two groups of 96 participants, native andnon-native speakers of French, to listen to short stories read at slow, medium andfast rates. They were asked to answer a few comprehension questions and to givean estimate of the speech rate. The results obtained show that there is indeed adifference between the two groups: the faster the physical speech rate, the greaterthe impression of speed in the non-native speakers as compared with the nativespeakers. In addition, when speech rate is slow and normal, there is a significantnegative correlation between oral comprehension and perceived rate: the lowerthe comprehension, the higher the estimated rate.

Previous research suggests that the broad-band amplitude envelope (ENV) of speech is crucial for the perception of speech rate and timing. The present experiment tested this claim using non-manipulated and spectrally rotated speech (rotated around 2.5 kHz) with a bandwidth of 5 kHz which both contain identical ENV and reversed speech in which the temporal organisation of ENV is distorted. 44 listeners of Swiss German rated perceived speech tempo on a continuous scale reaching from “rather slow” to “rather fast” in 48 stimuli (4 sentences × 4 speakers × 3 signal conditions). Results revealed a significant effect of signal condition. Both reversed and spectrally rotated speech were perceived as significantly faster than clear speech but there was no difference between spectrally rotated and reversed speech. Results were consistent for all sentences and speakers. Results suggest that the intelligibility of the signal plays a higher role in the perception of speech rate than the presence of the ENV.Previous research suggests that the broad-band amplitude envelope (ENV) of speech is crucial for the perception of speech rate and timing. The present experiment tested this claim using non-manipulated and spectrally rotated speech (rotated around 2.5 kHz) with a bandwidth of 5 kHz which both contain identical ENV and reversed speech in which the temporal organisation of ENV is distorted. 44 listeners of Swiss German rated perceived speech tempo on a continuous scale reaching from “rather slow” to “rather fast” in 48 stimuli (4 sentences × 4 speakers × 3 signal conditions). Results revealed a significant effect of signal condition. Both reversed and spectrally rotated speech were perceived as significantly faster than clear speech but there was no difference between spectrally rotated and reversed speech. Results were consistent for all sentences and speakers. Results suggest that the intelligibility of the signal plays a higher role in the perception of speech rate than the presence of the ENV.

The aim of this investigation is to examine whether the adults' difficulty in placing the written accent in Spanish words is related to their ability in perceiving stress. The following variables were also taken into account in this study: the participant's education level (academic and non-academic), the stimulus lexical status (words and non-words), accentual pattern (proparoxytone, paroxytone and oxytone words) and length (2, 3 and 4 syllables). Participants performed a stress identification task and a word spelling task. Besides the effects of lexical status, education level and accentual pattern, results show an effect of the stress perception in the assignment of the written accent: stimuli with a correctly identified stress were more likely to be correctly written (i.e. with or without written accent) than the incorrectly perceived stimuli. This finding reinforces the idea that there is a relationship between prosodic and written skills.

This research aims at examining the perception of accentual groups in French by French-speaking listeners and by Spanish/Catalan-speaking learners of French. The material was composed of French five-syllable sequences produced by native speakers of French and by Spanish/Catalanspeaking learners of French. The sequences were produced in the assertive and interrogative modalities. Moreover, a delexicalized version of the sequences was created. Participants listened to each sequence and had to decide whether it was composed of 1 or 2 groups. Results show that the listeners were more likely to perceive 2 groups when 1) the sequences were produced by learners of French, 2) the sequences were presented in the delexicalized version, and 3) the sequences' speech rate decreased.

cote interne IRCAM: Avanzi12c; None / None; National audience; This study aims at examining the accentual and phrasing properties of a variety of L2 French commonly called “Français Fédéral”, a variety of French spoken in Switzerland by speakers who have a Swiss-German dialect as a mother tongue. For this, we compared the data of 4 groups of 4 speakers: 2 groups of 4 native French speakers from Neuchâtel and from Paris, and 2 groups of 4 Swiss-German French speakers from Bern and Zürich. The data are semi-automatically processed, and three main prosodic features relating to accentuation and phrasing are examined: prominence distribution and metrical weight of the Phonological Phrase, respect of Phonological Phrase formation constraints (Align-XP and No-clash), and realizations of sandhis phenomena within and across the Phonological Phrases boundaries. Our findings suggest that “Français Fédéral” share several features with a lexical accentuation system rather than with a supra-lexical accentuation system.