Cet ouvrage offre un panorama des méthodes et des outils utilisables pour les analyses phonétiques sur de grands corpus oraux. Les ressources considérables dont nous disposons aujourd'hui dans le domaine de l’oral, en sont venues à jouer un rôle majeur pour les phonologues et les phonéticiens, qui entreprennent de soumettre leurs hypothèses théoriques à des tests empiriques étendus. On a vu se généraliser l'utilisation d'un large ensemble d'instruments et de méthodes pour le traitement et l'analyse automatique des données recueillies. L'ouvrage aborde notamment le prétraitement des données acoustiques, l’extraction (semi-)automatique des paramètres d’analyse, la mise en relation entre les données acoustiques et les catégories phonologiques. L’accent est placé sur le français, et les données recueillies dans le projet « Phonologie du français contemporain » sont utilisées dans de nombreux exemples. Une large place est accordée à la contribution des technologies de la parole, et notamment les systèmes de reconnaissance automatique de la parole, à l’analyse phonétique des grands corpus oraux.

This handbook presents the first systematic account of corpus phonology - the employment of corpora for studying speakers' and listeners' acquisition and knowledge of the sound system of their native languages and the principles underlying those systems. The first part of the book discusses the design, compilation, and use of phonological corpora, while the second looks at specific applications. Part 3 presents the tools and methods used, while the final part examines a number of currently available phonological corpora in various languages. It will appeal not only to those working with phonological corpora, but also to researchers and students of phonology and phonetics more generally, as well as to all those interested in language variation, dialectology, language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study.

This book examines the variation found in modern spoken French, based on the research programme 'Phonology of Contemporary French' (Phonologie du Francais Contemporain, PFC). Extensive data are drawn from all over the French-speaking world, including Algeria, Canada, Louisiana, Mauritius, and Switzerland. Although the principal focus is on differences in pronunciation, the authors also analyse the spoken language at all levels from sound to meaning. The book is accompanied by a website hosting audio-visual material for teaching purposes, data, and a variety of tools for working with corpora. The first part of the book outlines some key concepts and approaches to the description of spoken French. Chapters in Part II are devoted to the study of individual samples of spoken French from all over the world, covering phonological and grammatical features as well as lexical and cultural aspects. The book's companion website provides a class-friendly ready-to-use multimedia version of these 17 chapters, as well as the sound files and full transcription for each extract. Part III looks at inter and intra-speaker variation: it begins with chapters that provide the methodological background to the study of phonological variation using databases, while in the second section authors present case studies of a number of PFC survey points, including Paris, the Central African Republic, and Quebec. Varieties of Spoken French will be an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, and students of all aspects of French language and linguistics.

Phonetically reduced forms are plentiful, theoretically interesting, and a key challenge for automatic speech recognition systems. Yet canonical forms are still central to models of production and perception. Drawing from different fields and diverse languages, this volume brings new insights to the debate on abstractions and canonical forms in linguistics: their psychological reality, descriptive adequacy, and technical implementability.