Effects of Dialectal Origin on Articulation Rate in French

This paper compares the articulation rate of 4 varieties of French: Parisian French (PA); Swiss French spoken in Neuchâtel (NE) and French spoken by Swiss German speakers (BE and ZH) who have been living in a French-speaking environment (in Neuchâtel) for 20 years at least. The objective is twofold: to assess the differences in articulation rate between native French speakers of a standard variety (PA) and native French speakers of a regional variety (NE), and to address whether the non-native speakers (BE and ZH) exhibit a different behavior regarding their articulation rate compared with the native speakers of the corresponding variety (NE). Aside from the "regional" factor, this study takes into account additional factors that may have an influence on articulation rate: the gender and age of the speakers, the speech style (reading or conversational) and the number of syllables within the Accentual Phrase.