French Phonology: Test your knowledge! (help me understand?)

[tehol]

Hello all! I'm studying for my French Phonologie/Phonetiques exam. My school has old exams online that I'm studying from, but the different professor who created them used slightly different language, so I don't completely understand the questions. The content is probably still important though, so I thought maybe I'd post the questions here, and see if anyone could help? Translation, interpretation and/or phonetics/phonology knowledge will be useful.

Alternatively (as the title suggests), consider this a test of your French and/or linguistic abilities! (Do my translations work? Do you know the answers to the (obscure?) trivia I'm providing you questions on?)

Disclaimer: French is my second language, and Phonology and Phonetics are new to me this year.


Question 1

La structure syllabique VC constitue la structure syllabique la plus marquée. Vrai ou Faux?

The syllabic structure VC constitutes the the most stressedmarked* syllabic structure. True or False?

I'm not sure. Is this question asking if a syllable with a heavy rhime (rhyme?) is where the heaviest intonation is going to fall? What confuses me most is "most marked".


Question 2

Les voyelles moyennes arrondies [-atr] sont neutralisées au profit des voyelles moyennes [+atr] en syllabe ouverte finale. Vrai ou Faux?

Rounded middle vowels [-atr] are neutralised to the profit (benefit?) of middle vowels [+atr] in an open ending syllable. True or false?

How do you neutralise a vowel? What does that even mean? Looking at the chart I have (my professor calls it a "matrice des traits", which means "trait matrix"...), the question seems to be asking if the rounded middle vowels [-atr] change into +atr. Does this make sense?

Spoiler:

This isn't necessarily related to my primary question, but it might be of interest? The french rounded middle vowels with [-atr] are (pardon me, I don't know how to make all of the phonemes, so I describe some):
- a backwards c (a type of 'o', as found in "homme" (man))
- the same thing with a squiggle on top (so nasalised, pronounced 'on', as in "on a des lunettes" (we have glasses))
- oe
- oe with a squiggle on top (as in "un" (one))

If you changed the backwards 'c' see into +atr, it looks like it would be a normal "o". The oe would be a 'ø'. Does this make sense?

Question 3

L'attaque est un constituant obligatoire pour tout syllabe en français. Vrai ou faux?

The onset attack is an obligatory constituent for all syllables in French. True or false?

I know some attacks are empty... but they still "exist" in all french syllables, the way we were taught... Would you say that makes it an "obligatory constituent"?

Spoiler:

(for example: "animaux" ("animals") is [animo], and "les" ("the", plural) is pronounced [le]. However, the latent [z] is pronounced when you say "les animaux" (the animals), because the attack in [animo] is empty. You would say [lezanimo].

I might come back with more later, if you don't mind. Brownie points to whoever teaches me how to make the backwards 'c' appear on my computer! (I have it in word, but I can't do it in my FF browser, as in I can't find it in abcTajpu ...)

Thank you!

EDIT: was doing some wikipediaing, and I found that what we've been calling "the attack" is actually called "the onset"... I think. Our model is a lot more simplified. There is the Attack and the Rhime, and the Rhime breaks down into the nucleus and optional coda
*EDIT2: looked into my translation more, and found that "marked" was a very direct translation, not the most semantically accurate. "Pronounced", "stressed", "emphasized" seem like they might be better.

[poxic]

This is the only one that looks vaguely familiar:

La structure syllabique VC constitue la structure syllabique la plus marquée. Vrai ou Faux?

If that means "vowel-consonant structure is the most common", then the answer is "false". Standard French is heavily structured toward consonant-vowel. I recall one (born-in-France) prof ranting at us about our terrible grammar/spelling during 3rd year: she pronounced "inacceptable" as "i - na - cce - ptable".

[Derek]

This is the only one that looks vaguely familiar:

La structure syllabique VC constitue la structure syllabique la plus marquée. Vrai ou Faux?

If that means "vowel-consonant structure is the most common", then the answer is "false". Standard French is heavily structured toward consonant-vowel. I recall one (born-in-France) prof ranting at us about our terrible grammar/spelling during 3rd year: she pronounced "inacceptable" as "i - na - cce - ptable".

"Marked" means less common, so given your explanation, the answer would be "true". I don't know French, but in general I would say CV is a much more common syllable structure than VC, so that sounds right.

[tehol]

This is the only one that looks vaguely familiar:

La structure syllabique VC constitue la structure syllabique la plus marquée. Vrai ou Faux?

If that means "vowel-consonant structure is the most common", then the answer is "false". Standard French is heavily structured toward consonant-vowel. I recall one (born-in-France) prof ranting at us about our terrible grammar/spelling during 3rd year: she pronounced "inacceptable" as "i - na - cce - ptable".

Thanks ! That is useful to know.

I think a better translation of what I wrote would be "The syllabic structure VC constitutes the the most emphasized syllabic structure. True or False?". Perhaps the english phonological term that I am using isn't the best, though... (or perhaps my translation is stilling missing the boat). By "most emphasized", I mean "most likely to receive intonation", "most likely to be stressed", or "most likely to receive an accent".

[poxic]

The most-likely-to-be-stressed syllable is the final one of a word, non? I have no idea other than that. (Also see Derek's reply to my post -- Derek thinks I got the meaning of marquée backwards. And I might have. Last linguistics class was damn near 20 years ago. >.>)

[Makri]

I'm sure marquée means "marked" in this context, which sort of means uncommon. So the answer to the question is "true". "Emphasized" or anything to do with stress doesn't make sense for a language where stress is strictly on the last syllable, and while markedness is a common issue in phonology, the relation between stress and syllable structure alone (as opposed to syllable structure + position) is not.

How do you neutralise a vowel? What does that even mean? Looking at the chart I have (my professor calls it a "matrice des traits", which means "trait matrix"...), the question seems to be asking if the rounded middle vowels [-atr] change into +atr. Does this make sense?

The question is badly formulated. What it means is that you neutralize contrasts between vowels. It says that you generally have a contrast betwenn rounded middle +atr and -atr vowels (i.e. /ø/ ~ /œ/, /o/ ~ /ɔ/), but that in an open syllable, you get only the +atr versions. I'm not sure what the answer to that is. If I had to guess, I'd say "true".
There is also a contrast between unrounded + and -atr (/e/ ~ /ɛ/), which, however, as far as I know is not neutralized in most varieties. (I've ignored nasals; the question doesn't specifically say "oral vowels", but I'm not sure the contrast even exists in nasals.)

my professor calls it a "matrice des traits", which means "trait matrix"

The English term is "feature matrix".

I know some attacks are empty... but they still "exist" in all french syllables, the way we were taught... Would you say that makes it an "obligatory constituent"?

That is a theory-dependent question. In the theories where onsets are always there, but may be phonologically empty, the question is not specific to French in any way; for those, the presence of onsets is universal. But I suppose the answer is "yes", I've you've done this autosegmental explanation for liaison where you have floating melody that can fill an empty onset, which what you say suggests you have.

Also, you can get the symbols like the backwards c with the IPA character picker.

[Grop]

I can't see how "marquée" can mean unlikely or uncommon. I agree with Poxic's interpretation.

I am a native French speaker, but I know nothing about linguistics. I don't understand these statements.

La parole a la couleur de l'huile d'olive, sauf si on est jeudi. Vrai ou faux ?

[Makri]

"marked" doesn't mean "unlikely" or "uncommon" in ordinary English either. It's a technical theoretical term of linguistics. And so is "marquée". The interpretation along the lines of "emphasized" will make no sense to a phonologist in this context.

[Eugo]

I see that nobody is addressing the question from the thread subject - everybody is so attracted to phonology, that nobody noticed the second part, in the parentheses.

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is "yes, help you understand".

[Alcas]

Yeah, "marked/unmarked" are technical terms in linguistics, where unmarked refers to a structure that is common / the norm / desirable, and marked refers to an opposing structure which is uncommon / generally avoided. For instance, in English, sibilant clusters (more than one sibilant in a row) are marked, which is why we epenthesize a schwa when making the plural of words that end in a sibilant - e.g. we say "dishes" for /dish+s/ because of the markedness of "*dishs".

In terms of syllable structure and phonotactics, it's generally true across languages that onsets are unmarked and codas are marked. (Among other pieces of evidence, we see that the languages with the simplest syllable structure, such as Japanese or Hawaiian, have mainly syllables like "ka" and not like "*ak").

Therefore, the least marked syllable structure is CV, and VC - which has no onset, but a coda - is very marked. (Depending on what the question is asking, though, it might not be the "most marked" - VCC, for instance, would probably be more marked because consonant clusters are also marked.)