Ce travail de thèse a pour objet l’étude des principes gouvernant la coordination par « et » de deux mots en français. Il a pour but d’observer l’émergence de facteurs actifs dans la sélection d’un ordre préférentiel de coordination binaire directe par « et », hors contexte, selon un angle essentiellement phonologique ; et ainsi de tenter d'en proposer une pré-hiérarchisation en français. Il apparaît, en effet, que pour des exemples tels que « Cul et chemise », « Modes et travaux », « Émilie et Nathan », l'ordre adopté ici est l'ordre préférentiel en français, et ceci que l'on se base sur le jugement intuitif des locuteurs, ou qu'on l'atteste au moyen de relevés statistiques. Les locuteurs privilégient souvent spontanément un ordre à un autre dans ce type de formations, le jugeant plus naturel. Partant de ce constat, la question qui se pose est celle de savoir quels sont les facteurs qui régissent l'ordre de ces constituants en français. De nombreuses études se sont intéressées à cette problématique pour d'autres langues, spécifiquement pour l'anglais (Cooper et Ross (1975), Pinker et Birdong (1979), Wright, Hay et Bent (2002, 2005)). Toutes tendent à prouver que de nombreux facteurs phonologiques et extra-phonologiques jouent un rôle important dans le processus de formation de deux mots coordonnés. Néanmoins, à notre connaissance, l'étude des facteurs phonologiques actifs dans la coordination binomiale par « et » en français demeure à ce jour inédite. Nous tenterons de combler cette lacune. Pour ce faire, dans une approche empirique et expérimentale, nous avons rassemblé des données statistiquement valides, à partir desquelles nous avons ensuite dégagé des principes généraux. Puis, nous avons proposé une analyse phonologique dans le cadre d'une approche en terme d'interactions de contraintes inspirée par Plénat [1996,1997] dans laquelle nous appréhendons la sélection d'un ordre binomial préférentiel de coordination par « et » comme le résultat de conflits entre des principes ou des contraintes. / The concerns of this work are : first, to bring out the factors controlling two-word coordinating in French (nouns, adjectivies, tensed verbs and adverbs), second, to demonstrate the existence of active principles in choosing a preferential order to coordinate two nouns with “et”, third, to propose a study of coordinated words permutation, from a mainly phonological point of view. It seems indeed that, in examples such as “Cul et chemise”, “Mode et travaux” or “Emilie et Nathan”, the order displayed is the preferred one in French, either considering native speakers’ intuitive judgement or confirming it by a statistics survey. Speakers often spontaneously prefer an order, judged more natural, over the other in such structures. With this observation in mind, we asked ourselves a question: what are the factors that affect the order of those components in French. Many studies have taken an interest in that issue for other languages and in particular for English (Cooper and Ross (1975), Pinker and Birdong (1979), Wright, Hay and Bent (2002, 2005)). All of them tend to prove that several phonological and extra-phonological factors play an important part in the process of coordinating two words. There is however no study yet, as far as we know, about the phonological factors active in coordinating two words with “et” in French. We’ve this shortcoming. Aiming to that, with an empirical and experimental approach, we gathered statistically valid data, from which we drew general principles. Then, we made a phonological analysis in a constraint interaction framework inspired by Plénat [1996,1997], for which we looked at the “et”-coordinated two-word order preferred choice as the result of a conflict between principles or constraints.

This thesis project examined both schwa insertion and simplification following word-final consonant clusters in a large corpus of spoken French. Two main research questions were addressed. Can a system of forced alignment reliably reproduce pronunciation judgements that closely match those of a human researcher? How do variables, such as speech style, following context, motivation for simplification and speech rate, affect the variable pronunciations of word-final consonant clusters? This project describes the creation and testing of a novel system of forced alignment capable of segmenting recorded French speech. The results of comparing the pronunciation judgements between automatic and manual methods of recognition suggest that a system of forced alignment using speaker adapted acoustic models performed better than other acoustic models; produced results that are likely to be similar to the results produced by manual identification; and that the results of forced alignment are not likely to be affected by changes in speech style or speech rate. This project also described the application of forced alignment on a corpus of natural language spoken French. The results presented in this large sample corpus analysis suggest that the dialectal differences between Québec and France are not as simple as ``simplification in Québec, schwa insertion in France". While the results presented here suggest that the process of simplification following a word-final consonant cluster is similar in both dialects, the process of schwa insertion is likely to be different in each dialect. In both dialects, word-final consonant cluster simplification is more frequent in a preconsonantal context; is most likely in a spontaneous or less formal speech style and in that speech style is positively associated with higher speaking rates. Schwa insertion following a word-final consonant cluster displays much stronger dialectal differences. Schwa insertion in the dialect from France is strongly affected by following context and possibly speech style. Schwa insertion in the dialect from Québec is not affected by following context and is strongly predicted by a lack of consonant cluster simplification.

This thesis project examined both schwa insertion and simplification following word-final consonant clusters in a large corpus of spoken French. Two main research questions were addressed. Can a system of forced alignment reliably reproduce pronunciation judgements that closely match those of a human researcher? How do variables, such as speech style, following context, motivation for simplification and speech rate, affect the variable pronunciations of word-final consonant clusters? This project describes the creation and testing of a novel system of forced alignment capable of segmenting recorded French speech. The results of comparing the pronunciation judgements between automatic and manual methods of recognition suggest that a system of forced alignment using speaker adapted acoustic models performed better than other acoustic models; produced results that are likely to be similar to the results produced by manual identification; and that the results of forced alignment are not likely to be affected by changes in speech style or speech rate. This project also described the application of forced alignment on a corpus of natural language spoken French. The results presented in this large sample corpus analysis suggest that the dialectal differences between Québec and France are not as simple as ``simplification in Québec, schwa insertion in France". While the results presented here suggest that the process of simplification following a word-final consonant cluster is similar in both dialects, the process of schwa insertion is likely to be different in each dialect. In both dialects, word-final consonant cluster simplification is more frequent in a preconsonantal context; is most likely in a spontaneous or less formal speech style and in that speech style is positively associated with higher speaking rates. Schwa insertion following a word-final consonant cluster displays much stronger dialectal differences. Schwa insertion in the dialect from France is strongly affected by following context and possibly speech style. Schwa insertion in the dialect from Québec is not affected by following context and is strongly predicted by a lack of consonant cluster simplification.

The diploma thesis An analysis of the history of French borrowings' pronunciation from Middle to Modern English on the basis of corpus data attempts to account for the influence of Old French borrowings and their pronunciation on the Middle English phonological system with respect to Modern English. The theoretical part of the thesis explains extralinguistic and intralinguistic aspects of language contact and the related lexical and phonological borrowing, which is followed by an overview of the history of the English and French phonological systems and complemented by the corresponding scribal practices. The research is carried out on a list of French loans extracted from and further studied in Oxford English Dictionary. Selected samples are looked up in a Middle English corpus and their probable pronunciation is inferred on the basis of their orthography. The analysis is concerned with five French phonemes absent in the medieval English.