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The article considers two variants recorded in the process of voicing a scientific written text (hereinafter referred to as WT): neutral reading and stylization of an oral message, a technique commonly used in scientific communication, when the speaker voices the prepared written text of his message in order to create the impression of oral speaking. The experimental corpus includes excerpts from articles by French linguists, each voiced by 8 informants (native French speakers) in two variants: neutral voicing of the written text (hereinafter VWT) and stylization of the oral message (hereinafter OM). In the second case, the informants still follow the written text, but they can use any necessary language tools to create the effect of oral speech production. The implemented lexical-grammatical transformations are analyzed by comparing WT/OM, while the prosodic ones are studied by comparing VWT/OM. The transformations implemented by the informants indicate the following: first, the cognitive strategy of voicing WT requires that prosody, being a secondary actualizer of meaning, subordinates to syntax, which is expressed in their unidirectional interaction; second, the transformations observed in the OM are destructive both at the syntactic and prosodic levels, ensuring equal participation of prosody in “stylization” of the oral message.

Auditory speech perception is the most important type of human speech activity carried out in the process of language existence. What cognitive procedures does a person use when moving from a chain of sounds to the meaning of a message? What units are created by a complex interaction of lexical-grammatical and phonetic means? Segmentation of the speech flow is now the focus of linguists working with orally generated speech (hereinafter-UPR). The segmentation basis is recognized as semantic predicates of N.I. Zhinkin, clause of W. Cheif, syntagma of L.V. Shcherba, accent-melodic pattern, prosodic breaks. It is known that the study of UPR is impossible without spelling fixation, the creation of which turns the sounding substance into a graphic one, and the process into a product. The methods of creating transcription, as well as the methods of using it, depend on the task set in the study. The article presents segmentation performed in three modes: auditory analysis without visual transcription support, auditory analysis with transcription support, and transcription analysis without sound support. The obtained results indicate that the main unit of UPR reliably isolated from the sound continuum is the phonation period, segmented on the basis of two perceptual-auditory features: the tonal design of the terminal syllable and the phonation break.

Mid vowels are presented by two series of sounds: mid-high vowels /e/ ~ /ø/ ~ /o/ and mid-low /ɛ/ ~ /œ/ ~ /ɔ/ vowels. Compared to other vowels in French, they are characterized by significant variability, which is explained by several factors. One of them is the so called “oi de position” or closed/open syllable adjustment. This means that mid-high vowels are pronounced mainly in an open syllable, while mid-low vowels are pronounced in a closed one. Despite the existing phonological limitations, the realization of the law of position in the stressed syllable is becoming increasingly widespread in modern usage. This trend gives reason to consider the phonemes composing the oppositions /е/ ~ /ɛ/, /ø/ ~ /œ/, /о/ ~ /ɔ/ as positional variants of three phonemes /E/, /Ø/, /O/. Another important factor of the mid vowels vari- ability is distant regressive assimilation or vowel harmonization, which consists in the fact that the vowel of the stressed syllable affects the realization of the mid vowel in the preceding syllable. Until now, it was believed that assimilation affected the tongue height (first formant) of an unstressed vowel. In other words, high stressed vowels tend to increase the height of unstressed mid-low vowels, whereas low stressed vowels tend to low mid-high vowels. Therefore, in an unstressed position, as a rule, the sound of the middle timbre is pronounced [E], [Ø], [O]. The article discusses new data obtained in the corpus studies of this phenomenon in the last decade. Those data let us formulate methodological recommendations for teaching theoretical and practical phonetics of the French language.

The sound [ǝ] refers to one of the most complex and variable phenomena observed in the French speech stream. One of the most important features of [ǝ] is its ability to be both a sound and an absence of sound in almost the same context, i.e. without changing the informative content of the message. The specificity of French [ǝ] also lies in the fact that it is pronounced as a labialized vowel. As a result, three rounded vowels of the front row and middle rise are pronounced in an unstressed syllable: fluent [ǝ] and harmonized [oe] and [ø]. Taking into account the acoustic and articulatory similarity of these sounds and the law of least effort, the [ǝ] ability for complete reduction could be expected to be transferred to [oe] and [ø], especially in rapid speech. Do these facts indicate the French unstressed vocalism tendency towards simplification? How is this variability tracked by the speaker while understanding and generating speech? The article summarizes empirical data (acoustic, articulatory and perceptual) on the [ǝ] variability from phonetic, sociolinguistic and neuro-linguistic studies. It highlights major challenges and open issues that should be addressed in further research.

There are two opposing tendencies in the French speech stream. As a vocal-type language with a dominant open syllable and the absence of lexical stress, French creates sequences of two vowel sounds (gaping/l’hiatus) on the border of words in speech. Phonetic processes such as coupling (enchaînement) and binding (liaison) are used to remove this coarticulatively unfavorable context at the word junction. It is obvious that the implementation of coupling and binding at the border of words in the speech stream creates a diffuse acoustic marking of the external sandhi: words merge into a continuous physical signal. How do speakers create this co-articulatory cohesion of sounds in the speech stream? How do listeners manage to recognize in a continuous stream separate words that enter into certain syntactic and semantic relationships with each other? The article considers the external sandhi from the point of view of its articulatory, acoustic, auditory and cognitive processing.

Political speech (hereinafter PS) is a monological public speech of a political figure, which relies on a written text, the informative component of which is created at the lexico-grammatical level by the speechwriter, and the task of the politician is to ensure that the information is adequately understood by the listening audience. One way of doing this is to reduce the distance between the speaker and the audience. To achieve this “understanding”, the speaker uses the opportunities provided by the oral channel of communication both at the verbal level — the means of phonetic expression that create the prosody of the address — and at the non-verbal level — from body posture to gestures and eye expressions. In linguistics and psycholinguistics the synergetic interaction between prosody and kinesics is increasingly discussed today. How is this interaction realised in PS and what is its effectiveness? Is it possible to consider the realised PS as a multimodal speech utterance? In order to answer these questions this article examines the current approaches to the study of French PS presented in corpus linguistics [Goldman et al., 2009; Simon et al., 2010, 2013] and interdisciplinary linguistics [Kibrik, 2018; Guaitella, 2014] and discusses the relevance of their results to describe the prosody of address as a strategic component of PS.