Duration distinguishes tenses in Montreal French

In rapid connected speech, we observe that the forms of three tenses may be reduced to the same segmental string, for example [teta]; [tetapo]: (1) T'es à Pau (you're in Pau)—Pau is a town of France; (2) T'étais à Pau (you were in Pau); (3) T'as été à Pau (you've been in Pau or you went to Pau). Sonagraphic analysis of the production of five Montrealers asked to say [tetapo] with the intention of meaning the different tenses reveals that both intonation and duration, and, to a certain extent, intensity, as well as the vocalic spectrums, vary with the tense on the three syllables. In order to determine whether the variation of the duration alone is sufficient to distinguish the three tenses, three sentences /tetapo/ were synthesized by means of the Klatt programs at MIT. Tests were done with two groups of Montreal-French listeners (n = 24 and 103), and it was found that they were able to distinguish the three tenses on the basis of the variation of duration on the syllables, P = 1. [Work supported by CRSHC.]