The Intonation of Wh-Questions in Franco-Ontarian
Year:
1973
Author :
Volume and number:
, 18
Collection:
, 2
Journal:
, The Canadian Journal of Linguistics/La Revue canadienne de Linguistique
Pages :
, 89-101
Abstract
The intonation of interrogative sentences lexically marked by wh-words is examined for the Canadian French spoken in Ontario. 8 Franco-Ontarians read 100 sentences, among which were 16 wh-questions; these same Ss were later interviewed, & a spontaneous corpus of questions was obtained. These sentences were analyzed with oscillograms, the accuracy of which was checked by 12 listeners trained in phonetics. A normalized frequency in Hz was established for each syllable. The normal fundamental was also calculated. Among the prepared corpus sentences, monosyllabic interrogative pronouns at the beginning of a sentence, whether preceded by a preposition or not, underwent a decided rise in tone in relation to the normal fundamental. This was so for bisyllabic interrogatives. 10 of the 13 sentences of the corpus displayed a rising intonation at the end. Rising intonation marked 93% of the interrogative words & 62% of the sentence-final positions. With few exceptions this pattern was also found in the spontaneous corpus. The pattern is similar to that of standard French. However, the level of attack in Franco-Ontarian was sometimes lower & there was a tendency to shift the melodic prominence onto the 2nd syllable in sentences beginning with a monosyllabic interrogative. Franco-Ontarian, although similar to standard French, possesses a particular speech melody. D. Burkenroad
Theme :
FrancophonesOntario
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