Structure prosodique, structure de contrastes

Contrary to the well-known autosegmental-metrical theory, the phonosyntactic approach presented in this paper uses an explicit principle to explain the possible conflicting relations between syntax and prosody. From a simple starting hypothesis assuming the existence of a prosodic structure which organizes hierarchically sentence stress groups, and posing a set of constraints such as planarity, connexity, syntactic clash and eurhythmicity, it becomes relatively simple to enumerate all the possible prosodic structures that can be associated to a given syntactic structure. Careful examination of neutralization mechanisms involving prosodic markers leads to a clear understanding of experimental data, which may appear otherwise hard to interpret, both for laboratory and spontaneous speech.