LL-L "Phonology" 2005.11.28 (10) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 28 November 2005 * Volume 10
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From: "Ingmar Roerdinkholder" <ingmar.roerdinkholder at WORLDONLINE.NL>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2005.11.24 (05) [E]

Thinking of what I wrote about "French tonal accent", I was wondering if
this has anything to do with the famous tonal accents of the Limburgish,
Rhinelandish and Letzeburgisch dialects. All these dialects are neigh-
bouring French - or rather Walloon, and spoken on formerly Gallo-Roman
or Celtic ground. So there must have been several shifts in those areas:
first from Celtic to Vulgar Latin + Celtic, then to Romance, then to
Romance + Franconian (West Germanic), and at last to Limburgish/Middle
German. So this means also a shift from a language with stress like in
Romance, usually at the last syllable, to one with stress on the first
syllable, Germanic. My personal conclusion is that this stress shift is
the reason for the tonal accent in those dialects, and also that something
similar may be happening in present day French pronunciation, as I
described. I'm curious if these theories have been investigated by ling-
uists before, I'd like to read more about that, so if anyone knows...
Ingmar

>Niels Winther a écrit:
>>>
>Ingmar wrote:
>One other thing about tones and accents I've been wondering about for
>many years already, but never heard or read something or someone about:
>in French, the last syllable of a word bears stress, as a rule.
>But in modern spoken French, there seems to be a tendency to withdraw the
>stress to the first syllable. A tendency, I said, this doesn't mean that
>the first syllable actually gets the stress now, and the result sounds, in
>my ears, as if the first syllable in French gets a higher tone than the
>last, stressed one.
>Does this sound familiar to someone, does anyone recognize and / or
>understand what I mean?
>I always found this fascinating, but my French teachers didn't see what I
>was talking about...
><<
>Niels:
>Charles de Gaulle pronounced French as Ingmar describes it here.
>This new tendency might actually have spread through his influence.

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