This article, the sixth in a series presenting the results of a computer-assisted analysis of a tape-recorded corpus of natural conversations by members of the educated middle-class of Paris, deals with liaison. The results, as compared to those of earlier studies on this subject, show a number of interesting differences, possibly due to recent linguistic evolution. The frequency of liaison is studied in the context of (1) the grammatical functions of the contiguous words involved in the phenomenon, (2) the phonetic characteristics of the liaison consonant and (3) a number of paralinguistic variables such as sex, age, occupation, syllabic rate, loudness, the attitude and posture of the speaker, and subject matter. These results are incorporated into a new table of practical rules for the linguist, teacher and student of French, that also specifies liaison differences between the conversational style of the dominant (Ile-de-France) dialect of French and the artistic affectation known as elocution.

This third article in a series presenting the results of a computer-assisted analysis of a vast data file, based on recordings of upper middle-class Parisian conversations, deals with syllabic rate and utterance length. Performance standards are established for teaching, linguistic theory and voice-processing technology. Variations in these aspects of speech are studied as functions of a number of demographic, psychological, intellectual and phonetic background parameters. Syllabic rate is found to vary as a function of sex, age, occupation and certain intentions, while utterance length varies as a function of age, occupation, certain intentions, certain attitudes and loudness. Overall rate averages turn out to be strikingly consistent, most speakers showing about 344 syll/min. Finally, a positive correlation exists between utterance length and syllabic rate; the longer the utterance, the faster the rate and vice versa. A hypothesis is suggested that these results reflect language universals.

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This eighth report on the ‘Paris Project’ deals with a computer-assisted analysis of the frequency of elision among 10,891 mute-e’s in natural conversations as a function of phonetic context (number and nature of consonants contiguous to the /Ó™/, position in utterance, presence of other mute-e’s in contiguous syllables) and selected paralinguistic factors (sex, age, occupation, loudness, articulatory intensity, syllabic rate, degree of formality, attitude and posture vis-à-vis interlocutor, and subject matter). A separate analysis is made for coupled liquid and mute-e elision in cases such as I’autre jour /lot₃ur/ and pane que /paskÓ™/. Finally, the frequency of occurrence of the hesitation vowel euh is calculated in the three demographic categories indicated above. The results of the investigation reveal a number of new details and indicate some modifications in the traditional rules for its maintenance and elision. The paralinguistic correlates confirm an important discovery that is emerging from our long-range research, namely that in the dialect in question the most diachronically advanced speakers belong to the central age groups (30–59 years), the youngest (20–29) and the oldest (60–69) manifesting marked conservative tendencies.

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