CHAPITRE I
1 According to Roach’s glossary (2009), the term suprasegmental was originally used by American writers, whereas prosody was more British. Throughout this work, the term prosody encompasses stress, rhythm, and intonation.
2 The phonemic transcriptions are from Wells’s Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 2007.
3 Throughout this work and in the several studies that are mentioned, the term L2 acquisition refers to both second language acquisition (SLA) and foreign language acquisition (FLA).
CHAPITRE II
1 This statement does not take into consideration primary school, where the teaching of a foreign language is now also compulsory.
2 Also note the colloquial use of da for the, even in phrase-initial position.
3 Some phoneticians specify that /?:, i:, ?:, u:, ??/ are in fact slightly diphthongized, which amounts to saying that all tense vowels are diphthongs (see Deschamps et al., 2004, or Roach, 2009).
4 For a more detailed explanation, see 2.2.1. and e.g. Flege’s Speech Learning Model.
5 The underlining shows the syllable bearing the nucleus.
6 The word people is now present in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries – e.g. it is in the 2010 French-English Robert & Collins dictionary, translated as “celebrity” and transcribed /pip?l/. The pronunciation /pi’pol/, with a closed /o/, has also been heard by some French TV presenters.
7 As the objective here is to compare French and English and highlight their specific differences, the third type of language, i.e. mora-timed languages, is not discussed.
CHAPITRE III
1 Most of the experiments on the perception of language by infants are conducted thanks to close examinations of head-orientation responses to natural speech.
CHAPITRE IV
1 I wish to thank Sarah Christine Lloyd, Anne Molloy, and Jenny Salata, who allowed me to come and make announcements during their classes.
2 Many thanks to all three judges who accepted to do this task.
CHAPITRE V
1 It must be borne in mind that the rating task was individual. The three raters never met to carry out the task, and they were not aware of the aim of the experiment, either.
2 Except for the rising tone on questions, also present in the French prosodic system.