Schwa Deletion in Word-Initial Syllables of Polysyllabic Words

Investigations Using Large French Speech Corpora

Authors

  • Yaru Wu Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie, CNRS-Sorbonne Nouvelle
  • Martine Adda-Decker Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie, CNRS-Sorbonne Nouvelle
  • Lori Lamel LIMSI, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.17311

Keywords:

Schwa deletion, large corpora, forced alignment, speech style, spontaneous speech, spoken French

Abstract

This study aims to analyse factors that could influence schwa deletion in word-initial syllables of polysyllabic words in continuous French speech. Both phonological and extralinguistic factors were considered: number of consonants, post-lexical context, speech style, sex and profession. Three large corpora covering different speech styles were explored using forced alignment with optional schwa variants. Formal journalistic ESTER corpus, conversational journalistic ETAPE corpus and casual speech NCCFr corpus were used in this study. We observe that schwa tends to be deleted more for 2C-words than for 3C-words. Words preceded by a consonant or a pause tend to prevent schwa deletion whereas words preceded by a vowel tend to facilitate schwa deletion. The less formal the speech style is, the more schwas are deleted. Males tend to delete schwas more frequently than females. Interestingly, journalists tend to delete more schwas than politicians in our data.

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Published

2020-12-24

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Wu, Yaru, Martine Adda-Decker, and Lori Lamel. 2020. “Schwa Deletion in Word-Initial Syllables of Polysyllabic Words: Investigations Using Large French Speech Corpora”. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech 2 (2): 269–289. https://doi.org/10.1558/jmbs.17311.