Allongements vocaliques en français de Belgique : approche expérimentale et perceptive (Vowel lengthening in Belgium French: an experimental and perceptual approach) [in French]

________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Vowel lengthening in Belgium French: an experimental and perceptual approach This paper investigates the lengthening of certain vowels in Belgian French and its influence on the perception of a Belgian accent. Based on recordings made in Belgium, two perceptual experiments were conducted, involving Belgian and French listeners: the first one enabled us, in a robust way, to identify lengthened vowels perceived as regionally marked by experts; the second one, using prosody modification/resynthesis, tested the impact of vowel lengthening with respect to the perception of a Belgian accent among naïve listeners. The first experiment showed that the vast majority of vowels perceived as lengthened are in word-penultimate syllable or belong to monosyllabic words and that these vowels are generally nasal or mid-closed vowels. The second experiment suggests that, all other things being equal, speech samples including vowel lengthening phenomena are rated as having a higher degree of accentedness than their counterparts without vowel lengthening. MOTS-CLÉS : variation régionale, accent belge, perception, (re)synthèse de prosodie.