A Phonetic Study of Acoustic and Aerodynamic Correlates of Prominence in French

National audience The paper presents an integrated study of the role of subglottal pressure (Psg) and other acoustic parameters as correlates of perceived syllabic prominence in French. The covariation and interdependencies of subglottal pressure, articulation and source parameters, fo and intensity have been studied in a set of sentences. Continuously scaled syllable prominence, received stress (Rs), has been determined from listening tests and is added to a measurement display derived from Fant et al. (2000) model. This is done in synchrony with oscillogram, spectrogram, fo and two intensity parameters, the sound pressure level SPL and a high frequency pre-emphasized measure, the SPHL. The focus of the study is the predictability of SPL from subglottal pressure and fo baseline and their temporal patterns, in particular in relation to stress and prominence. The paper also focuses on an analysis of sub- and supraglottal pressure on vowels and consonants, in isolation and in stressed and unstressed positions. An interesting finding of the study is that Psg is often raised well in advance of a stressed syllable and reaches a maximum at the left boundary and the then decays at a rate increasing with the prominence. A fo peak in a stressed vowel is often located in an interval of decaying subglottal pressure. The purpose of the study is to contribute to relate all possible acoustic and aerodynamic parameters (Subglottal pressure, duration, intensity, spectral tilt, the fo pattern, inherent pitch and microprosody) of perceived prominence in a more integrated knowledge base.