O objetivo geral desta dissertação é fornecer um quadro amplo da formação dos compostos nas línguas naturais, deflagrando o que deve ser visto como universal em sua formação e o que deve ser visto como particular às línguas. Partindo de uma língua específica, o português brasileiro, demonstramos como a composição se estabelece em um sistema particular, e, no contraste entre as propriedades de seus dados e as propriedades atestadas nesse processo em trabalhos taxonômicos e tipológicos, delineamos as fronteiras entre o geral e o específico. Admitimos que sejam duas as propriedades universais da composição que devem ser abarcadas em um sistema gerativo: (i) o estabelecimento de uma relação gramatical entre os membros de um composto, a saber, uma relação de subordinação, atribuição ou coordenação fato bem comprovado translinguisticamente nos trabalhos de Bisetto e Scalise (2005), Guevara e Scalise (2009), e Scalise e Bisetto (2009) , e (ii) a criação de um domínio categorial acima de dois núcleos complexos conectados em determinada relação gramatical, o qual garante que uma estrutura complexa quase-sentencial seja interpretada como uma única unidade sintática. O particular nesse processo de formação de palavras reside no modo como as línguas naturais emolduram morfologicamente seus compostos, ou se a partir de uma combinação entre radicais, ou se a partir de uma combinação entre palavras, bem como os processos fonológicos que determinam a composição em um sistema linguístico específico. Essa assunção é evidenciada pela variedade de estruturas morfológicas encontrada nos compostos translinguisticamente, e pela assistematicidade de processos fonológicos que se aplicam nos compostos a fim de demarcá-los em uma língua. Para explicar esses fatos, assumimos um modelo não-lexicalista de gramática, a Morfologia Distribuída (cf. HALLE; MARANTZ, 1993; EMBICK; NOYER, 2007), e, com base nesse aparato teórico, demonstramos que as propriedades universais da composição são diretamente abarcadas no componente sintático. As relações gramaticais, primeiramente, são formalizadas através dos tipos de aplicação da operação Merge, tal como definidos em Chomsky (2000, 2004), nomeadamente, set-Merge e pair-Merge, enquanto que o domínio categorial é formado a partir da concatenação de um núcleo definidor de categoria acima de duas ou mais raízes categorizadas. As estruturas morfológicas, por sua vez, serão emolduradas pós-sintaticamente, nos componentes morfológico e fonológico da gramática, onde a variação translinguística se processa. Para tanto, argumentamos que a informação de classe carrega um papel importante na variação estrutural dos compostos translinguisticamente, pois será a presença ou ausência dessa informação que determinará quando uma raiz sintática será um radical ou uma palavra, distribuindo, desse modo, as estruturas sintáticas dos compostos em combinações morfológicas variadas / The main goal of this thesis is to provide a broad picture of compounding in natural languages, triggering what should be considered universal and what should be considered languagespecific in this word formation process. Starting from a particular language, Brazilian Portuguese, we demonstrate how compounding is established in a linguistic system, and by the contrast of the properties present in its compounds with the attested properties provided in taxonomic and typological works on the subject, we outline the boundaries between what is general and what is specific to this language. We argue that there are two universal properties of compounding that should be accounted for a generative system: (i) the establishment of a grammatical relation between the constituents of a compound, namely subordination, attribution and coordination a crosslinguistically well-proven fact in the works of Bisetto and Scalise (2005), Guevara and Scalise (2009) and Scalise and Bisetto (2009) and (ii) the formation of a categorial domain above two constituents connected in a specific grammatical relation, which ensures that a quasi-sentential structure will be interpreted as a single syntactic unit. What is language-specific in this word formation process lies in how languages frame their compounds in morphological structures, whether in a combination of stems or in a combination of words, as well as the phonological processes that specify compounding in some linguistic systems. This assumption finds evidence in the variety of morphological structures found in compounds through the languages of the world, and in the unsystematicity of phonological processes that apply to compounds to demarcate it in a particular language. In order to explain all the above-mentioned facts, we assume a non-lexicalist approach to grammar, the Distributed Morphology framework (see HALLE; MARANTZ, 1993; EMBICK; NOYER, 2007), and based on its tenets we demonstrate that the universal properties of compounding are straightforwardly accounted for the syntactic component of the grammar. Primarily, the grammatical relations are formalized through the nature of the operation Merge, as defined in Chomsky (2000, 2004), namely, set-Merge and pair-Merge, while the categorial domain is created by the concatenation of a category-defining head above two or more categorized roots. The morphological structures of the compounds will be framed post-syntactically at the morphological and phonological components, where crosslinguistic variation takes place. To this end, we argue that class marker information plays an important role in the variation of compounds morphological structure crosslinguistically, since it will be the absence or the presence of this feature that will define whether a syntactic root will be externalized as a stem or as a word, distributing this way the syntactic structure of a compound in various morphological combinations

Esta dissertação visa analisar o uso no português brasileiro, doravante PB, da pista prosódica de duração de sílabas na produção e percepção de sentenças ambíguas do tipo SN1-V-SN2-Atributo, tais como A mãe encontrou a filha suada. Tais sentenças apresentam contextos em que pode haver reestruturação de frases fonológicas a depender da interpretação escolhida. Um dos trabalhos que guiaram esta pesquisa foi o de MAGALHÃES & MAIA (2006), no qual os autores também observaram sentenças com ambiguidade devido à presença de um atributo que pode se referir ao sujeito ou ao objeto da oração. Fonologicamente, tais leituras podem ser explicadas pelo fato de o atributo poder ou não se juntar a seu núcleo na construção do domínio da frase fonológica, em que, se há fronteira, um alongamento é esperado (NESPOR & VOGEL, 1996). ANGELO & SANTOS (2012, 2015) concluíram que os falantes não realizaram alongamento significativo, porém, observaram uma tendência a produzir sentenças de aposição não local mais longas. O que se propõe, então, é que o alongamento é um fenômeno existente na língua, mas é opcional. Se isto é verdade, sempre que ele for feito, a sentença deve ser interpretada como não local. Caso contrário, haveria uma variação nas respostas perceptuais ou preferência por aposição local (Princípio da Aposição Local verificado por MAGALHÃES & MAIA (2006) no PB com base no Princípio de Late Closure apontado por FRAZIER (1979)). Dois testes foram realizados: No de produção, além dos 30 falantes de Angelo & Santos, mais 20 foram escolhidos e outros 10 recuperados para que lessem ambas as versões de cada uma das 9 sentenças em meio a histórias que guiavam a um ou outro significado, totalizando 720 dados. No de percepção, foram selecionadas as 3 versões mais longas (de aposição não local) e as 3 mais curtas (de aposição local) do teste de produção para cada sentença, em um teste onde 30 ouvintes selecionaram através de imagens qual a interpretação obtida, totalizando 1620 dados. Primeiramente, os resultados apontaram para diferenças significativas observando o tipo de estrutura (os falantes alongaram e acertaram as não locais). Por tipo de sentença, a diferença foi significativa na maioria delas, confirmando a predição de que, ainda que o alongamento seja opcional na produção, uma vez realizado, ele serve como condutor para uma interpretação não local. Para as sentenças locais, o Princípio de Aposição Local verificado no PB por MAGALHÃES & MAIA (2006) também foi observado em nosso experimento. Por fim, os resultados apontam para 2 tipos de estruturas que podem interferir no processo de alongamento: Sentenças em que o atributo é formado por adjetivos deverbais (geração de uma fronteira CP) e sentenças que permitem construções de small clause (bloqueio da reestruturação). / The aim of this thesis is to analyze the use of syllable duration in Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP) as a prosodic cue in the perception and production of syntactically ambiguous sentences with a NP1-V-NP2-attribute structure (lit. The mother has found her daughter sweating). This type of sentence is produced in contexts where phonological phrases may be restructured, depending on how the sentences are interpreted. A reference for the present research was the study by MAGALHÃES & MAIA (2006), who also found sentences which ambiguity was due to the presence of an attribute that may refer to either the subject or the object of the clause. Phonologically, interpretations of the above-mentioned structure can be explained by the fact that attributes may or may not join the head in the construction of the phonological phrase domain, because lengthening is expected when there is a boundary (NESPOR & VOGEL, 1996). ANGELO & SANTOS (2015) found that the speakers in their study did not make significant lengthening; however, they tended to produce high attachment in longer sentences. It is suggested, therefore, that although lengthening exists in BP as a phenomenon, it is optional. If this is actually true, sentences should be interpreted as having high attachment whenever lengthening is produced. Otherwise, it is assumed that there is variation in perceptual responses or preference for low attachment (Low Attachment Principle, found in PB by MAGALHÃES & MAIA (2006), based on the Late Closure Principle proposed by Frazier (1979)). Data were collected with two tests. In the sentence-reading production test, 30 speakers from the study by ANGELO & SANTOS (2015)) and 20 new speakers read one version of each sentence, while 10 out of the former 30 read two versions, thus the corpus was made of a total of 720 sentences. The perception test used the three longest versions (with high attachment) and the three shortest versions (with low attachment) of each sentence. The informants who took the test chose the image that best represented the meaning that they assigned to each sentence. A total of 1620 data were produced. Overall results showed significant differences for type of structure (the informants lengthened and identified high attachments correctly). For sentence type, there were significant differences in most sentences, thus confirming the hypothesis that lengthening is optional in production and, once it has been performed, it can lead a sentence to be interpreted as having high attachment. For sentences with low attachment, the Low Attachment Principle suggested by MAGALHÃES & MAIA (2006) also occurred in our experiment. The findings signal two types of structures that may interfere with the lengthening process: sentences whose attribute is formed by deverbal adjectives (generation of a CP phrasal boundary) and sentences that allow small clause constructions (restructuring is blocked).

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:24:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carla_confrontada.pdf: 967904 bytes, checksum: c3ddee6508b5c47e4d3217f528a70764 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-07-01 / The telemarketing sector is in frank expansion in Brasil, and for many it represents the initial opportunity for formal employment. In active telemarketing, the operator calls the customer whereas in receptive telemarketing the call is made by the customer. Since there is no face to face interaction performance of the operator, in both modalities, is solely dependent on his or her verbal communication skills. Thus, their voice is probably the most important component for success. For good communication there must be variations in voice pitch, loudness, speed and intonation, which are essential for good prosody. However, there are relatively few studies examining the subject of intonation in telemarketing. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to characterize the intonation profile of telemarketing operators, as well as to identify the intonation pattern more widely accepted by the customers of a cellular telephony company. For this, a questionnaire was applied to 212 customers and an analysis of the intonation of 40 telemarketing operators conducted using Brazil´s Interactive Theory of Intonation. 50 customers were also asked to listen to audio recordings containing the most frequent intonation patterns and requested to identify the most pleasant ones. Differences in customer service were observed between the two modalities of telemarketing (active or receptive), especially by younger customers (20-30 year olds). Of the 40 discourses evaluated, the most recurrent intonation pattern was the rise pattern both in the active and receptive telemarketing modalities. In active telemarketing, however, the second most prevalent pattern was the fall pattern, whereas in the receptive modality it was the fall-rise pattern. Based on the opinion of the 100 customers that listened to the recordings, it may be concluded that regardless of the type of telemarketing, the rise and fall patterns were considered more natural, in contrast to the fall-rise, pattern which was perceived as exagerated or caricatured. In active telemarmarketing the fall pattern was more widely accepted whereas the rise pattern was better accepted in receptive telemarketing. In addition, the rise and fall pattern was more positively evaluated by male customers. Thus, it may be concluded that, regardless of the type of telemarketing, it is necessary for the company to study the profile of its customers in order for its operators to use the most adequate voice intonation / O setor de telemarketing encontra-se em expansão no Brasil e surge como uma primeira oportunidade de emprego formal. No telemarketing ativo, o papel do teleoperador é o contato direto com o cliente é ele quem faz a ligação, enquanto que, no receptivo, ele recebe a ligação. Neste cenário, a voz torna-se uma ferramenta de trabalho essencial, pois grande parte do desempenho do teleoperador relaciona-se diretamente à comunicação verbal. A voz necessita, para uma boa comunicação, variações de pitch, loudness, velocidade de fala, entoação. Esses parâmetros estão relacionados à prosódia. A literatura apresenta poucos estudos que contemplam a entoação no telemarketing. O presente estudo teve como objetivo caracterizar o perfil entoacional do operador de telemarketing, assim como identificar o tipo de padrão entoacional mais aceito pelos clientes de operadoras de telefonia celular. Para tanto, foi aplicado um questionário a 212 clientes de empresas de telefonia celular, realizado um estudo da entoação de 40 teleoperadores com base na Teoria Interacional da Entoação, desenvolvida por David Brazil, e apresentadas, a 100 clientes, gravações dos padrões mais recorrentes para que identificassem os mais aceitos. Os resultados mais representativos foram: os clientes percebem diferenças entre as formas de atendimento do telemarketing ativo do receptivo, principalmente, os de faixa etária mais jovem (20 a 30 anos); foi identificado como padrão mais recorrente, entre as 40 falas transcritas, o tom ascendente, tanto no telemarketing ativo quanto no receptivo. Contudo, no telemarketing ativo, o segundo padrão mais recorrente foi o descendente, e no telemarketing receptivo, foi o descendente-ascendente. De acordo com a avaliação de 100 clientes, os quais escutaram gravações de vozes de teleoperadores, os tons ascendentes e descendentes, independente do tipo de telemarketing, foram considerados naturais, e o tom descendente-ascendente foi considerado exagerado ou caricato. No telemarketing ativo, o padrão descendente foi mais aceito, e no telemarketing receptivo, os tons ascendentes. O padrão descendente-ascendente teve uma avaliação mais positiva pelos clientes do sexo masculino. Dessa forma, podemos concluir que é necessário conhecer o perfil do cliente que irá utilizar os serviços de telemarketing da empresa, seja ele receptivo ou ativo, para que o operador possa adequar a entoação à forma mais agradável ao cliente

Die Untersuchung widmet sich am Beispiel des Shona dem sprachlichen Phänomen der sententiellen Subordination, bei der letztere primär durch regelhafte prosodische Mittel, die die Verbalform verändern, signalisiert wird.

The diploma thesis examines the space, which is devoted to the work with the phenomena of the Russian language phonetics level, both on phonemic and prosodic levels in the selected coursebooks for teaching Russian language at lower and upper secondary schools. The theoretical part deals with the main principles of phonetics didactics and its importance and goals. Next, the approaches to teaching phonetics and the ways in which phonetics can be taught are also defined. Finally, attention is paid to the issue of interference phenomena. The theoretical part of the thesis provides the basis for the practical part of the thesis. The practical part offers the characteristics of the examined coursebooks, which is followed by the results of content analysis of coursebooks. The research focuses on the quantity, i.e. the number and frequency of assignments to form phonetic literacy, and the quality of the assignments. Both textbooks and workbooks of selected coursebooks are subjected to analysis. Methodologically, this work is based on the already realized analysis of the supervisor of this diploma thesis. The results of the analysis are presented at the very end of this part of the work and are provided first for each coursebook, then the result of the comparison of coursebooks with the results of the...

This thesis deals with temporal characteristics of tone units in read speeches of professional speakers. The main goal of the research is to follow variability of the articulation rate (AR) within tone units. Thus, the domain where we investigate AR is the tone unit and we also deal with the general articulation rate. Read narrations in Czech in wildlife documentaries represented the studied material. To verify the statistical significance, we used the linear mixed effects model and the ANOVA test. The results of the measurement of the general average articulation rate within the narrations showed that the values of one speaker were significantly different from those of the other speakers. Interpersonal variability was also proved by the ANOVA tests and intrapersonal variability was also evidenced. The average AR values with regard to linear segmentation proved to be relatively uniform. Statistical verifications did not prove any statistical significance either. In our analyses of tone units, we investigated whether AR was influenced by the size of tone units in prosodic words, further by the position of the prosodic word in the tone unit, and what were the directions of AR changes inside the unit. Statistical tests were used to verify the significance of the impact of the tone unit size as well as...

De par leur présence à l’interface entre plusieurs domaines linguistiques (phonologie, morpho-syntaxe, sémantique ou pragmatique), les déterminants ont depuis longtemps suscité l’intérêt des chercheurs en acquisition. On trouve ainsi de nombreux travaux portant notamment sur les contraintes phono-prosodiques, lexico-syntaxiques, sémantiques ou pragmatiques à l’œuvre dans le processus d’acquisition de ces formes, mais peu d’entre eux ont cherché à proposer une analyse combinée de ces facteurs, en tenant compte à la fois des morphèmes adultes et des formes de transition (omissions et fillers). Nous avons donc souhaité, dans le cadre de ce travail, décrire l’émergence des déterminants et de leurs proto-formes en essayant de saisir, dans une perspective multidimensionnelle intégrant à la fois des facteurs distributionnels et fonctionnels, quels facteurs influencent le plus ce processus, et à quelles périodes.Cette thèse repose sur l’analyse d’un corpus longitudinal de quatre enfants, âgés de 1;6 pour le plus jeune lors de la première séance sélectionnée à 3;5 pour le plus âgé lors de la dernière. Nous avons repéré au sein de ce corpus tous les noms produits par les enfants ainsi que les formes les précédant et chaque syntagme a fait l’objet d’une analyse phono-prosodique, lexico-syntaxique, sémantique, pragmatique et discursive.Les résultats montrent d’une part que tous les facteurs distributionnels peuvent - à des degrés différents - influencer la production des formes pré-nominales, et d’autre part, que les usages que les enfants font des formes témoignent d’une sensibilité précoce à certains contrastes pragmatico-discursifs. Toutefois, aucun des facteurs pris séparément n’a permis de rendre compte de l’intégralité des productions des enfants. L’analyse conjointe de ces facteurs distributionnels et fonctionnels a confirmé les tendances dégagées au préalable et a mis en évidence l’influence d’un ensemble de facteurs (et en particulier, phono-prosodique, syntaxique et pragmatique) plus que d’un facteur unique ou prédominant tout au long du processus d’acquisition des déterminants. / Given their presence at the crossroads of different linguistic fields (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics or pragmatics), determiners have for a long time aroused the interest of language acquisition researchers. We thus find several studies dealing with the phono-prosodic, lexical and syntactic, semantic or pragmatic constraints involved in the acquisition of determiners. But only few of them have provided a combined analysis of all these factors, considering both adult morphemes and transitional forms (omissions and filler syllables). Our study aims to describe the emergence of filler syllables and determiners and understand - in a multidimensional perspective examining simultaneously distributional and functional factors - which factors may affect the acquisition process, and over which periods of time.Our study is based on a corpus of four children, aged from 1;6 for the youngest in the first selected session to 3;5 for the eldest in the last session. We first identified all the noun phrases produced in the data and each occurrence was then analysed according to phono-prosodic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discursive factors.Our results show that each distributional factor may influence, at different degrees, the production of pre-nominal forms and that children’s use of forms shows early sensitivity to pragmatic factors. However, none of the factors taken separately have accounted for all of the children’s productions. An additional combined analysis of both distributional and functional factors has supported the initial trends and highlighted the influence of a series of factors (and in particular, phono-prosodic, syntactic and pragmatic), more than a single and predominant one throughout the acquisition process of determiners.

iv Abstract The MA thesis examines the word-formation potential of expletive insertion with simple and complex words in English. It represents a linguistic phenomenon that is commonly used by native speakers, shows a certain degree of regularity and has gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, social media and the movie industry. The theoretical part introduces the previous studies on the phenomenon and presents the basic features of the phenomenon, namely the categorization of inserts and the classification of their positions in terms of the structure of the base as outlined by McMillan (1980). The extraction of the sample is described in the methodology section. The empirical part examines the phenomenon's main principles of use governed by prosody and morphology and illustrates the properties and both regularities and irregularities that the process exhibits (predictable insert position, poly-syllabicity of the base, its unchanged meaning and syntactic category, alternative categories of input bases and morphematic discontinuity of bases). The analysis comprises of two main parts: the study of the inserted bases (word-class, type of base, simple vs. complex, and a number of syllables) and the study of the expletive insert (representation of individual inserts and their position relative to stress...

華語三聲變調的運作範疇(domain)一直以來皆是漢語音韻學家激烈探討的主題，不同研究對於運作範疇的定義皆不同，而過去研究也留下了一些尚待解決的問題，例如分類詞(Classifier)以及介係詞(Preposition)如何與其他音節形成三聲變調的運作範疇。本篇論文藉由觀察語料庫中324句最短為6音節，最長為24音節且由數個三聲音節所組成的中文句子，來檢視台灣華語三聲變調若以Nespor & Vogel (1986)所提出之韻律階層(Prosodic hierarchy)為範疇來運作是否能得出自然且多樣的聲調組合。以下分析主要根據韻律階層的順序分成以下四部分：音韻詞(Phonological word)、附著詞組(Clitic group)、音韻詞組(Phonological phrase)、語調詞組(Intonational phrase)。而作者假設三聲變調有兩種運作方式，一種為循環(Cyclic)，一種為同時(Simultaneous)。循環運作時，三聲變調可先以音韻詞邊界為範疇，再以附著詞組邊界為範疇，再以音韻詞組邊界為範疇，最後再以語調詞組邊界為範疇。同時運作時，三聲變調則只以語調詞組邊界為範疇。語料庫分析結果顯示，中心語(Head)之非遞歸邊(Nonrecursive side)的分支性(Branchingness)需被納入音韻詞組的定義中以得出正確的聲調組合。再者，語調詞組的定義也需將語意(Semantic)以及韻律(Metric)的因素納入考量，以限制語調詞組邊界的形成。經過修正，韻律階層理論不僅能成功描述分類詞以及介係詞之三聲變調現象更可預測華語三聲變調的多樣性。 / Mandarin tone sandhi has been argued by different scholars to apply to different phonological domains such as the foot, the phonological phrase etc. This thesis tackles three main issues left by Shih (1986) and Hsiao (1991): the classifier, the preposition and the under-generation problem. In revising the framework of Nespor & Vogel (1986)’s Prosodic Hierarchy, this thesis proposes a possible explanation of the problems. This thesis constructed a corpus of 324 sentence tokens consisting of 6 to 24 third tone syllables. The tokens were recorded from four Taiwan Mandarin native speakers at a speech rate of at least 200 beats per minute. Through the observation of the tone patterns collected, it is found that the original definitions of the phonological phrase and the intonational phrase given by Nespor & Vogel (1986) are not able to describe the Taiwan Mandarin data. This thesis provides a revision of the prosodic hierarchy by taking into account the branchingness of the nonrecursive side on the phonological phrase level and by incorporating Selkirk (1984)’s Sense Unit Condition on the intonational phrase level. Finally, a foot formation condition is also proposed in order to restrict the minimal length of a phonological phrase or an intonational phrase.

Cette thèse étudie la coarticulation C-à-V en français et son interaction avec d’autres sources de variations dans le but de mieux comprendre ce qui la module et ce qui gouverne la variation dans la parole. Pour cela, à partir de grands corpus de parole, nous avons testé comment la coarticulation C-à-V était fonction : 1) des caractéristiques articulatoires des consonnes et voyelles impliquées à partir de 18.5k voyelles /i, e, ɛ, a, x, u, o, ɔ/ (/x/=/ø, œ, ə/) en contexte ALVéolaire, UVulaire et VÉLaire ; 2) de la position prosodique occupée par les voyelles, en comparant le degré de coarticulation de 17k séquences CV et VC, V=/i, e, a, ɔ/ et C=ALV|UV, en position initiale de groupe intonatif, avec celui de séquences semblables en position interne de mot ; et 3) du style de parole, en analysant le degré de coarticulation dans 22k séquences CV et VC, V= /i, E, a, u, ɔ/ (/E/=/e, ɛ/) et C=ALV|UV, issues de parole journalistique et conversationnelle. Cette thèse montre qu’en plus de dépendre des caractéristiques articulatoires des segments, la coarticulation est aussi modulée par des facteurs linguistiques, liés à l’organisation prosodique du message, et des facteurs communicationnels dépendant de la situation de communication. Cependant, certains résultats suggèrent que la modulation de la coarticulation par la position prosodique et le style de parole, ont des fonctions linguistiques différentes dont les implications sur la variation dans la parole seront discutées. Enfin, une réflexion sur les changements de sons en lien avec la préférence universelle pour l’antériorisation des voyelles postérieures fermées sera proposée à partir des différences observées entre les voyelles. / This dissertation examines C-to-V coarticulation in French and its interaction with others sources of variation in order to better understand what modulates and governs variation in speech. Based on data from large speech corpora, we tested how C-to-V coarticulation is a function of: 1) the articulatory properties of the tested segments, i.e. 18.5k vowels /i, e, ɛ, a, x, u, o, ɔ/ (/x/=/ø, œ, ə/) in ALVeolar, UVular et VELar contexts; 2) the prosodic position occupied by the vowels, comparing the degree of coarticulation of 17k CV and VC sequences V=/i, e, a, ɔ/ and C=ALV|UV in initial position of intonational phrases, to similar sequences in internal word position; 3) the speech style, by analyzing the degree of coarticulation in 22k CV and VC sequences, V = /i, E, a, u, ɔ/ (/E/ = /e, ɛ/) and C = ALV|UV, in journalistic and conversational speech. The thesis demonstrates that coarticulation, in addition to being dependent on the articulatory characteristics of segments, is also modulated by other linguistic factors, related to the prosodic organization of the message, and communicational factors depending on the communication situation. Indeed, vowels are more resistant to coarticulation in strong prosodic positions as in formal speech. However, some results suggest that the modulation of coarticulation by prosodic position and speech style have different linguistic functions whose implications for speech variation will be discussed. Finally, a reflection on sound changes related to the universal preference for the anteriorization of back closed vowels will be proposed from the observed differences between the vowels.