The French accent: a proposal in metrical phonology

Abstract

This paper has as main objective of making a phonological analysis of accent in French from the perspective of metrical phonology. Unlike other studies, that point to the existence of only one accent in the word, rhythmic group and sentence, this paper aims to find the theoretically accent or possible secondary accents in these three levels: word, rhythmic group and sentence. Metrical phonology was developed precisely in order to study and formalize themselves to accent languages. It is able to provide through a simple and objective analysis the primary accent and the secondary accents of analyzed segments. We could analyze all these accents in French as their regularity in the levels of word, rhythmic group and sentence.