Vowel Lenght - Comparison of Czech and French Vowel Systems from the Phonetic and Phonological Point of View : A Pedagogically Focused Contrastive Study
Abstract
The thesis, one of the French-Czech contrastive studies, deals with the issue of vowel length in Czech and French language. The first part of the thesis, which was intentionally written for a potential pedagogic use, introduces the comparison of the main phonetic and phonological characteristics of both languages, their typology considering vowels length and its development through the history of these languages.
The second part, experimental, brings the description and results of several attempts which observe whether the French native speakers learning Czech respect the length of Czech vowels, further the influence of following consonants, final and initial stress and also the type of a syllable on the length of French vowels, both in the production of French native speakers and Czech native speakers learning French. The results prove that articulatory habits which both groups of speakers use in their mother tongue have a significant influence on the production of the acquired language.
In the third part, the results of French and Czech language teaching files analysis are presented which show not only a very low occurrence of the activities for vowel length practice in both languages, but also little space available for phonetics in the textbooks of the foreign languages. There are also suggestions and proposals for mastering and practising of the studied issue in Czech and French language.