Analyse contrastive des variables temporelles de l’anglais et du français: vitesse de parole et variables composantes, phénomènes d’hésitation

Abstract

Abstract This paper analyses the different temporal variables of English and French in a similar linguistic task, namely radio-interviews. Both languages show a great deal of similarities, but differ considerably with regard to silent pauses and the distribution of the secondary variables. A tentative explanation for these differences is given; it is partly based on the hypothesis that the two languages have the same over-all behaviour in view of a given linguistic task, but differ in the distribution of the simple variables. A compensation would therefore take place at the level of the simple variables leading to identical central values for the complex variables of the two languages.