Phonetics and Phonology of Language B - French 3201-1FONBF

The goal of the course in French phonetics and phonology is to introduce students to the details of the phonetic system of this language. The approach adopted in this course is not only normative, but also descriptive, therefore non standard pronunciation is also analysed.
The course is also designed to acquaint students with basic terms that fall within the scope of phonology, in accordance with the distinction made between phonematics and prosody. While discussing phonematics, stress is put on the notion of phoneme, and its distinctive and non-distinctive characteristics. In the field of prosody, some of the most important phenomenons including stress, intonation, vowel quantity, etc. are presented.
The part of the course which is devoted to phonetics, often compares and contrasts the French phonetic structure with the Polish one. It enables students to acknowledge the differences and similarities, which is an important element of the French as a second language learning process.
The course covers the fundamental questions in the field of phonetics. It discusses the status of phonetics as a science, the differences between phonetics and phonology, as well as those between a sound and a phoneme. The articulatory phonetics focuses on the anatomy of speech and sound production. It describes the vowel system of the French language, its nasal sounds, short and long vowels, the silent e and semi-syllables, as well as the the consonant system, namely stop, fricative, nasal and liquid consonants. The combinatory phonetics introduced in the course examines different elements of the speech chain, the process of assimilation and linking (liaison) in the French language. The chosen aspects of acoustic phonetics, historical phonetics, corrective and normative phonetics, as well as descriptive phonetics are also covered in the course.
Moreover, in this course students get acquainted with the rules of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and with the transcription of French texts, which is practiced throughout a number of classes. Finally, the way of prononuncing French numbers and dates, as well as a variety of proper names is presented.
The last classes of the course examine the relationship between spoken and written language, and the existing writing systems.
The course requirement for getting a grade and a signature in the student's book is to turn in a paper containing a trascription of a short French text (150 words) and a comment on the use of long vowels, and to obtain a positive grade in the final test.