Timing Patterns in French

Abstract The observed timing pattern of an utterance reflects a number of linguistic factors, including rate of utterance, accent, and phonological units such as segment, syllable, stress group, phonological phrase, etc. This investigation seeks to isolate the durational correlates of accent and of the higher-level phonological units. An experimental method is adopted which enables the effects of the other, extraneous factors (rate of utterance, etc.) to be filtered out. Once this has been done, the results show consistent durational correlates for the units phonological word, phonological phrase, etc., but none for accent. An abstract timing pattern for French utterances is proposed.