Теория языка | Филологический аспект №11 (103) Ноябрь 2023

К вопросу об универсальности и специфичности интонационных характеристик французских частных вопросов

Камрыш Ольга Вячеславовна
канд. филол. наук, доцент кафедры фонетики и методики преподавания иностранных языков, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, РФ, г. Санкт-Петербург, kamrysh@mail.ru

Аннотация: Исследование посвящено интонационной организации современного французского языка. В статье приводится информация о различных мелодических моделях, используемых в специальных вопросах носителями французского языка. Большое внимание уделяется исследованию информативно значимых участков интонационной кривой. С целью определения возможных эмоциональных и эмфатических значений специальных вопросов французского языка был проведен перцептивный анализ. Результаты исследования получены на основе изучения большого количества экспериментальных данных. Как следует из названия, в статье описываются универсальные и уникальные интонационные особенности французских вопросительных высказываний.
Ключевые слова: интонационная модель, эмоциональное значение, восходяще-нисходящее движение тона, универсальные и специфичные черты французских вопросительных высказываний.

Kamrysh Olga Vyatcheslavovna
PhD in Philology, associate professor at the Department of Phonetics and Methods of teaching foreign languages, St. Petersburg State University, Russia, St. Petersburg

Abstract: This study deals with the intonational organization of the modern French. The paper gives valuable information about different melodic models used by native speakers in French special questions. Much attention is given to research informatively significant sections of the intonation curve. The perceptional analysis was carried out in order to determine possible emotional and emphatic meanings of French special questions. The results of this study are based on the large experimental data. As the title implies the article describes universal and unique intonational features of French interrogative utterances.
Keywords: intonational model, emotional meaning, rising-falling tone, perception of melody, universal and specific features.

Резюме. Статья посвящена исследованию звукового облика французских частных вопросов различных синтаксических типов, а также выявлению универсальных и специфических черт в их интонационном оформлении.

Обращение к проблеме интонационных характеристик французских вопросов обусловлено необходимостью систематизировать и дополнить описания, существующие в теоретической литературе на современном этапе. Установление универсальных способов интонирования вопросительных высказываний во французском языке и выделение их уникальных черт представляет интерес как для совершенствования методики обучения фонетики французского языка как иностранного, так и для решения целого ряда прикладных задач.

Анализ акустических характеристик производился на основе подкастов, находящихся в свободном доступе, аудиодорожек современных французских фильмов, а также аудиозаписей учебных пособий. Полнота и достоверность полученных выводов обеспечивается значительным объемом проанализированного материала (всего было обследовано 559 вопросительных высказываний; общая продолжительность звучания фактического материала составила более 55 часов).

Изучение закономерностей восприятия интонационных характеристик осуществлялось в ходе серии специально организованных перцептивных экспериментов. В ходе исследования были выявлены информативно значимые участки интонационной кривой, которые позволяют слушающему оценить высказывание как нейтральное или эмоционально окрашенное. Была также показана зависимость восприятия некоторых эмоционально-модельных значений от формы интонационного контура и других акустических параметров. Результаты сопоставительного анализа дают основание говорить о том, что сходные интонационные модели могут иметь разные значения во французском и русском языках, что необходимо принимать во внимание не только при фонетическом описании используемых в речи интонационных единиц, но и при анализе прагматического аспекта высказывания в условиях языкового контакта.

The intonational arrangement of an utterance is an inherent part of the language system. A comparison of the descriptions of intonational models proposed in contemporary theoretical literature demonstrates that a common trait of the Russian and French languages is the presence of synonymous intonational constructions [7; 12]. One more universal is the use of some acoustic means modifying the intonational contour, perceived as neutral, and making it possible to convey emotional and evaluative meanings [16]. Nevertheless, the number of possible versions of melodic arrangement and their variety seem to be unique for each language [5].

Intonational constructions of the Russian language and the emotional and evaluative meanings that can be conveyed by means of these contours are characterized in Bryzgunova’s works [2]. The nomenclature of intonation models for the French language was first established by Delattre [4, p. 1 - 14]. Delattre’s system was taken as a basis for the majority of later studies of French intonation [1; 3; 6; 11]. This list includes a special contour called “implication”, which is characterized by the ascending-descending tone movement and is associated with the expression of additional emphatic meanings. All other intonational constructions are bound to a particular syntactic utterance type. It should be noted that works devoted to the intonational characteristics of French utterances show only the general direction of melodic changes and do not take into account the variability of intonational contours [9]. Moreover, it is not evident which intonational constructions in French can have emotional and evaluative meanings and stylistic variations, just as it happens in Russian. Thus, the determination of the borders of variation of intonation contours in the French language will make it possible to reveal the universal and specific features of the intonational arrangement of utterances in Russian and French. Besides, the specifics of the perception of the intonational arrangement of statements of different syntactic types should be highlighted. Special perceptual experiments are needed to determine the intonational features of those utterances that native speakers evaluate as “neutral”. One more important task is to determine the intonational characteristics that can be correlated with additional emotional and modal meanings.

To solve the above-mentioned tasks, a series of experimental and phonetic studies was carried out together with the students of the Department of General and Applied Phonetics of St. Petersburg State University. The corpus of experimental material included freely available podcasts, audio tracks of contemporary French films, recordings of study guides. The total duration amounted to more than 55 hours of audio recordings. A total of 559 interrogative utterances were examined. French interrogative sentences of different syntactic organizations were analyzed: 1) special questions with a question word at the beginning of the sentence and the construction est-ce que; 2) special questions with a direct order of the subject and predicate and a question word at the end of the utterance; 3) special questions with direct word order and a question word at the beginning of the sentence.

The results of this study make it possible to distinguish different types of intonational patterns in French special questions [10]. It was demonstrated that the French speakers use the traditionally recommended model with the descending tone movement  [8; 4, p. 1 - 14] as well as the other models (with the even or the ascending tones). Besides, a more detailed description should also be provided in the case of the realization of descending melodic contours. Thus, for utterances with a question word at the beginning of the sentence and a direct order of the subject and predicate, the variant of melodic arrangement with a descending tone movement was observed in 82% of cases [13]. However, the variability of melodic changes within the group of descending contours turned out to be more significant than it follows from the descriptions found in methodological and theoretical literature. The study of the intonational arrangement of interrogative sentences of this syntactic type shows that, apparently, not only the direction of tone movement from the beginning to the end of the utterance should be taken into account, as in Delattre's classification, but also the intonational arrangement of individual sections of the utterance. It seems possible to distinguish the informatively significant sections of the intonation curve. These include the section of the interrogative word, as well as the final syllable(s) of the sentence. Besides, one can bring up the question of the association of these melodic changes with the perception of additional modal meanings and various emotional connotations of the utterance.

Phonologically significant intonational differences should be determined only when referring to the perception of native speakers. To identify the emphatic or modal meanings attributed to a particular utterance, a series of perceptual experiments was organized. The results of the perceptual analysis made it possible to draw the following preliminary conclusions. First, it can be stated that the evaluation of the speaker’s degree of interest in the subject of conversation is associated with the nature of the melodic arrangement of the last stressed syllable or the last two syllables of the utterance. The listeners associated the intensive rise on the stressed syllable with the expression of “amiability” and “interest”. When the intonation of the stressed syllable of the resynthesized questions changed from sharply rising to flat or falling, participants in the perceptual experiment noted “indifference” in the speaker's voice, and the communication environment was generally characterized as “cold, unfriendly”. Second, a correlation was found between the shape of the melodic curve and the perception of certain emotions. Above all, it should be noted that the appearance of additional evaluations in the listeners’ responses can be associated with the irregularity of the intonation contour. In such utterances, the participants in the perceptual experiment noted the presence of negative emotions: “irritation”, “exactingness”, and “fear”. Third, the data obtained make it possible to speak about the impact of other acoustic parameters on the evaluation of the utterance as emphatic. First of all, the results of the perceptual analysis demonstrate that a significant factor for perception is the widening or, on the contrary, narrowing of the variation range of the frequency value of the basic tone within the utterance in general or in its separate sections. For instance, utterances with an interrogative word at the beginning of the sentence and direct word order were evaluated as pronounced with the emotion of “surprise”, when there was an increase in the range of melodic changes on the interrogative word or at the end of the phrase. The recognition of “surprise” was recorded both for phrases with a descending tone movement on the interrogative word and with an upturn in that portion of the utterance. Thus, it is the value of the frequency range of the basic tone, rather than the direction of melodic motion, that appears to be decisive for the perception of the additional meaning of “surprise”. Obviously, in this case, the results of the listening experiment confirm earlier assumptions based on the material of other languages, including Russian, which can testify to the universality of the use of melodic means to convey emphatic meanings. For example, the association of the emotional evaluation with the irregularity and complexity of the melodic contour was noted for the Russian language in the work by Svetozarova [14]. Changes in the range of melodic changes and register values as compared with the neutral realization were also repeatedly noted as a distinctive feature of emotionally colored utterances in different languages [16].

A comparative analysis of the intonation systems of Russian and French shows that some melodic patterns have different meanings in two languages. For example, the presence of the rising-falling tone movement in the interrogative utterance (intonational construction 3 – IC-3 in Bryzgunova's classification [2]) is traditionally considered an inherent feature of the Russian intonational system [15, p. 92]. The experimental data indicate that in the French language, such a contour is used to convey additional emotional meanings. Thus, the set of tones specified by the respondents included “curiosity” and “surprise”; the speaker's tone received such positive emotional assessments as “happy”, “friendly”, “admiring”, and “self-assured”. It can be assumed that the bell-shaped form of the melodic curve on the intonation center is one of the ways of expressing some emotional meanings in French. On the contrary, the IC-3 in Bryzgunova's classification with the similar rising-falling tone movement is characteristic of emotionally neutral utterances in Russian.

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