Prosodic Frequency in Signaling Linguistic Distinctions at UNIMED First Year Non-native French Students
Hesti Fibriasari

Abstract
This study is specifically concerned with the effect of frequency on linguistic distinctions and has two major purposes: (1) to investigate the prosodic frequency of twelve French selected utterances and (2) to demonstrate the comparative frequencies between French native and non-native speakers. This study was conducted in French Pedagogy Program at UNIMED Medan in 2015. Data for this study were obtained from the help of twenty one (3 males and 18 females) university students and one French native speaker who were determined as subjects. Experiments were held at the Department’s language laboratory and recorded on audiotape and processed with Praat. The results did not support the expectations that the subjects could pronounce the utterances the same as what native speaker did. On the basis of the results of this research, it can be concluded that the prosodic frequencies of the non-native speakers are significantly different from the native speaker in the levels of tone, pitch contour and duration; however, linguistic distinctions could not bring negative impacts of meanings or could be minimized although the prosody was not the same. The differently prosodic frequencies were caused by some factors, such as, lack of knowledge of phonetics and phonology, of systematic practice, and of understanding French patterns. Students did not have good technique and did not understand the composition of French alphabets. They had problems in the pronunciation of vowels (voyelles orales), nasalized vowels (voyelles nasales), sounded or unsounded final consonants, and shift (liaison).

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