ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014

Modeling of a rise-fall intonation pattern in the language of young Paris speakers

Roberto Paternostro, Jean Philippe Goldman

Intonation seems to be one of the major cues for identifying youth language in the Paris region. As part of a large-scale corpus-based analysis, this paper attempts to model a high-low final prosodic pattern, considered to be representative of a Paris working-class suburbs accent. Comparison with the emphatic high-low prosodic pattern, well-known in general French, will provide the opportunity for sociolinguistic insights. The ethnic hypothesis is dismissed in favor of a context-bound and interaction-sensitive interpretation.