Phonetic word


In Russian phonology and in some other languages, a phonetic word is a sequence of morphemes clustered around one nuclear stress. A phonetic word may contain more than one lexical item.

Russian language

It may consist of a single content word and adjacent clitics. It may include a proclitic, an enclitic, or even both: у нас бы, по Москве ли.
In most cases an accent falls on a syllable of the content word, never on the enclitic, and in rare cases it may fall on the proclitic leaving the content word unstressed: на горе́ vs. на́ гору. In modern standard Russian there is a tendency to abandon putting accent on the proclitic. Still, this is preserved in phraseologisms, such as поверить на́ слово or схватиться за́ голову.
The unstressed content words are the vestige of the Old East Slavic/protoslavic prosodic feature called enclinomenon, a word or group of words without stress.
The concept of the phonetic word is important because quality, intensity and duration of vowels in unstressed syllables depend on their location in relation to this stressed syllable.
The concept of phonetic word should not be confused with loss of stress in rhythmic speech, e.g., in poetry, in trisyllabic metrical feet:
  • Не спеши́ написа́ть мне не то́
  • Есть прокля́тье заве́тов свяще́нных

    French language

In French language the concept of mot phonétique was introduced by François Wioland in 2005.
Les mots phonétiques sont des unités minimales de production et de perception qui signifient, que l’on peut observer dans les communications verbales, sans référence consciente à l’écrit, comme le sont les échanges et dialogues spontanés, soit présentiels, soit téléphoniques
Examples:
  • Single-syllable: oui; vous
  • Two-syllable: bonjour; sans blague! - Stress: da daaa
  • Three-syllable tout a fait; au retour - Stress: da da daaa
  • Four-syllable: sans aucun doute - Stress: da da da daaa
  • Six-syllable: il est américain - Stress: da da da da da daaa
Examples of phrases that consist of two three-syllable phonetic words: "ces enfants sont petits"; "il est bon en français"; "vous avez entendu?"
Mots phonétiques can have secondary accents. However the syllable preceding the main accent completely loses its accent. Also, accents tend to alternate, i.e., there will be a sequence of unaccented sylables, rather than a sequence of accented syllables. This principle is called "accent clash avoidance." According to this principle, if an utterance is grammatically split into, e.g., two mots phonétiques, then if the second one is monosyllable, the two are pronounced as one mot phonétique.
Mots phonétiques should be distinguished from rhythmic groups.