A Neglected Factor of French Prosody: The peak variation at the end of rhythmic groups

The aim of this research is to study the functioning of the peak variations at the end of the rhythmic groups in spoken french. For this purpose, the text '60 Voix, 60 Exercices', published by Hachette in 1988, was selected. This textbook is based on interviews with 60 persons who briefly speak in a monolog from on a subject of their choice. 500 hundred different groups were selected and submitted to the auditory judgment of six informants, three French natives and three Japanese natives who had studied French for at least three years. It was found, first, that there exists a tendency to a change of either rising or tolling intonation compared with the flat one, and second, that the rising intonation obtains a flirty good score of frequency compared with the two other, ones even if the examined sentences do not pertain to the strict classical types of interrogative or exclamative sentences or dialogs, where affectivity is so often an important factor.