This paper compares the articulation rate of 4 varieties of French: Parisian French (PA); Swiss French spoken in Neuchatel (NE) and French spoken by Swiss German speakers (BE and ZH) who have been living in a French-speaking environment (in Neuchatel) for 20 years at least. The objective is twofold: to assess the existence of differences in articulation rate between native French speakers of a standard variety (PA) and native French speakers of a regional variety (NE); to address whether the non-native speakers (BE and ZH) exhibit a different behaviour regarding articulation rate compared with the native speakers of the corresponding variety (NE). Besides the "regional" factor, this study takes into account further factors that may have an influence on articulation rate: gender and age of speakers, speech style (reading or conversation) and number of syllables within the Accentual Phrase.

Index Terms: prosody, articulation rate, standard French, nonnative French, regional French, accentual phrase.