Date of Completion
2020
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Linguistics
Thesis Type
Honors College
First Advisor
Maeve Eberhardt
Keywords
Pitch, F0, bilingual, French, English
Abstract
Pitch differences between men and women are partially linked to differences in average larynx size. Men have been shown to have a lower pitch range than women due in part to physical factors such as longer larynges. However, even with a natural difference in average pitch in men and women, social factors in various cultures can affect this natural pitch difference, either helping to distinguish men from women or shrinking this gap. Bilinguals have the potential to be active participants in the multiple cultures their fluency allows them to; therefore, I am examining if bilinguals manipulate their average pitch depending on the language they are speaking reflective of social factors. This study looks specifically at two English/French bilingual actors, Timothée Chalamet and Lily-Rose Depp. This study measured their fundamental frequency (F0) using interviews in English and French. The F0 was found to be higher and to have a smaller range (in semitones) in French than English for both informants. These differences in F0 demonstrate that there is a pitch difference between these two bilingual informants when speaking English and French, and future research could analyze if this expands to a larger sample size of English/French bilinguals.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Bellino, Kate Isabella, "Cross-Linguistic Pitch Differences in English and French Bilinguals: Timothée Chalamet and Lily-Rose Depp" (2020). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 333.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/333