French Production Research Articles

The /s/ ~ /z/ voice contrast in L1 French, L1 Spanish and L1 Italian learners of L2 English

Abstract In this study, we present a comparative corpus-based analysis of the English /s/ ~ /z/ voice contrast for learners of three L1s. Acoustic analysis of periodicity and duration for target segments confirms expectations based on L1 transfer and on the Markedness Differential Hypothesis. We found that, due to the absence of phonemic /z/ in Spanish, L1 Spanish learners exhibit great difficulty in producing voiced realisations for /z/, and more so in the (more marked) word-final position than in the (less marked) word-medial position. In contrast, L1 French and L1 Italian learners did not exhibit difficulties in reproducing the voicing patterns of English /s/ ~ /z/ neither word-medially nor word-finally, due to the existence of these sounds in their L1 (and despite differences in relative markedness for these two positions, especially considering that word-final /z/ does not exist in Italian). Finally, we observed the impact of orthography on the production of L1 French and L1 Italian learners, affecting the periodicity of /s/ and /z/ depending on spelling transparency.

Tetrodotoxins in French Bivalve Mollusks-Analytical Methodology, Environmental Dynamics and Screening of Bacterial Strain Collections.

Tetrodotoxins (TTXs) are potentially lethal paralytic toxins that have been identified in European shellfish over recent years. Risk assessment has suggested comparatively low levels (44 µg TTX-equivalent/kg) but stresses the lack of data on occurrence. Both bacteria and dinoflagellates were suggested as possible biogenic sources, either from an endogenous or exogenous origin. We thus investigated TTXs in (i) 98 shellfish samples and (ii) 122 bacterial strains, isolated from French environments. We optimized a method based on mass spectrometry, using a single extraction step followed by ultrafiltration without Solid Phase Extraction and matrix-matched calibration for both shellfish and bacterial matrix. Limits of detection and quantification were 6.3 and 12.5 µg/kg for shellfish and 5.0 and 10 µg/kg for bacterial matrix, respectively. Even though bacterial matrix resulted in signal enhancement, no TTX analog was detected in any strain. Bivalves (either Crassostrea gigas or Ruditapes philippinarum) were surveyed in six French production areas over 2.5–3 month periods (2018–2019). Concentrations of TTX ranged from ‘not detected’ to a maximum of 32 µg/kg (Bay of Brest, 17 June 2019), with events lasting 2 weeks at maximum. While these results are in line with previous studies, they provide new data of TTX occurrence and confirm that the link between bacteria, bivalves and TTX is complex.

Critical Discourse Analysis of Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s Speeches against France

Discourse is directly connected to human emotions and feelings. The use of language and selection of words reflects the inner feeling of a person when he/she is hurt religiously. The same thing happened when France projected the Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) cartoons. This was shocking news for the whole Ummah because it hurt all Muslims of the world in one way or another. Khadim Hussain Rizvi has shown resistance against the immoral attitude of France and recorded his protest to ban French products from the whole country. The government of Pakistan assured him to fulfill this demand in the specified period. He became the voice of the whole nation. This research paper is a critical investigation of the discourses used by Rizvi in his speeches against France. Moreover, it is also under examination that how through the use of language Khadim Hussain Rizvi expresses his emotions. This is purely qualitative research where data has been collected from the internet, books, research papers, and newspapers.

The resilience of popular national cinemas in Europe (Part one)

ABSTRACT The national has not withered away in the era of globalisation, and national cinemas still persist in various ways, even in the smallest nations. Using data collected for the MeCETES project, this article (the first of two looking at these issues) examines the evidence of popular national cinemas in contemporary Europe (2005–2015). It looks at admissions data for domestic productions, nation by nation, demonstrating that most European countries enjoy a small number of considerable national successes each year. In 2011, for instance, the French production, Intouchables, topped France’s admissions chart (and also did extraordinarily well across Europe). National productions also outranked all other films, including multi-million-dollar Hollywood blockbusters, in Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic. The majority of these national successes were small-scale films, with themes, characters or subject-matter that resonated in the country of production. Few of them were co-productions and few travelled successfully across borders. National audiences showed a remarkable commitment to such films, demonstrating that popular national cinema is still a meaningful presence across Europe. The second article (Part Two) will look at some of the strategies deployed to create attractive and repeatable consumer products, the most common being genre. It will then re-visit the concept of national cinema, asking what role it plays in the era of globalisation.

Parlez-vous francais?Effects of structure-based versus dynamic-usage-based approaches on oral proficiency

We investigated the effectiveness of two different teaching methods based on two different theoretical views of how languages are learned in oral proficiency after three years of L2 French instruction. The first method is commonly used in the Netherlands and is in line with structure-based (SB) principles, viewing language as a set of grammar rules that need to be explained to achieve accuracy, usually in the L1. The second method aligns with dynamic-usage-based (DUB) principles in that language is viewed as a set of conventionalized routines that are learned through frequent exposure and the L2 is spoken exclusively in class. In a large study (Rousse-Malpat et al., 2019), the DUB method proved more effective, but the effects of method and L2 exposure could not be separated as the amount of L2 exposure is a crucial difference between the methods. However, one SB teacher spoke French almost exclusively, comparable to what happens in a DUB classroom. In this study, we compared this SB group with a DUB group matching in scholastic aptitude. The free oral L2 French production of 41 Dutch participants was measured in terms of holistic and analytical scores. The DUB method was more effective in terms of general proficiency, fluency, grammatical complexity, accuracy of the present tense, and overall L2 use. Our findings suggest that a teaching method in line with DUB principles is more beneficial in achieving overall oral proficiency and explicit grammar is not needed to achieve accuracy.

Articulatory settings and L2 English coronal consonants.

Background/aims: We explore the potential contribution of Articulatory Settings (AS) theory to L2 speech production research, testing the hypothesis that L2 segmental speech learning should involve a gradual, overall shift in both place and constriction degree, simultaneously affecting all consonants of a series as opposed to a set of parallel but unrelated changes in learners' production of individual sounds. Methods: We conducted an electropalatography study of four francophone learners' production of French and English word-initial and -medial /t d s z n l/ via carrier-sentence reading tasks. Results: L1-L2 differences in tongue shape are more common than those in constriction location, first and foremost for sonorants, and, thus, our results are not completely consistent with AS theory's claims. Conclusions: AS theory provides a potentially rich framework for exploring the L2 speech learning of consonantal phenomena including low-level L1-L2 differences in place of articulation. We propose that the observed lack of systematic between-language articulatory differences could be attributed to a number of factors to be explored in future research, such as the targeting of voicing and manner differences before the adjustment of small place differences as well as individual patterns of entrenchment of L1 articulatory routines.

Les Revenants: horror in France and the tradition of the fantastic

ABSTRACT Les Revenants, a Canal+ TV series about a small town whose dead return to life, was one of the biggest critical and popular successes of the 2010s on the domestic and international markets. While the series has been discussed by the French popular press as part of a concerted effort among French production companies to compete in long-form serial television, its engagement with the tradition of French horror has been less well understood. This essay examines how the series brings a distinctly French sense of the fantastic into an international media landscape in which Hollywood films have typically defined the global idiom of horror around sensation and the body. In so doing, the article suggests that French films and series have played an important role in redefining what horror can mean in the early twenty-first century.

اتجاهات الشباب الجامعي نحو معالجة مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي لقضية الإساءة للرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلاقتها بقراراتهم نحوها

اتجاهات الشباب الجامعي نحو معالجة مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي لقضية الإساءة للرسول صلى الله عليه وسلم وعلاقتها بقراراتهم نحوها

RETALIASI ISLAMOPHOBIA DI PRANCIS DALAM PRINSIP MAQASHID SYARI’AH DHARURIYYAH

This article describes the Islamophobia in France and the boycott of French products by Islamic countries due to the French Government's statement regarding the caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. With a focus on the concept of Maqashid Syari'ah Dharuriyyah, this paper will analyze how the Dharuriyyah principle can protect beliefs and whether this boycott has a significant impact in France. The data from this paper were obtained through the Mendeley library and processed using the analytical description method with VosViewer. The result of this paper is that the boycott carried out by Muslims with the maintenance of religion under the context of Dharuriyyah succeeded in realizing the French economy with the decline in the stock market in France.

Nomino-Adjectival Collocation in Written Production of L2 French

The acquisition of lexical competence is complex, since it is not enough for learners to distinguish the form and the meaning of a lexical element in order to know how to correctly integrate it into the language context. Learners prefer some lexical combinations to others. Generally speaking, these combinations are determined by usage and by frequency of use in the target language. The question of frequency leads to characterizing the particular cases of co-occurrences as collocations (Anctil, Tremblay 2016). According to Tutin and Grossmann, “one often characterizes collocations by the fact that the meaning is transparent in reception (it is “guessed”), whereas, for a non-native speaker, it is difficult to produce the appropriate lexemes” (Tutin, Grossmann 2002). We will try to verify this statement and define the regularities of lexical combinations in L2 French interlanguage of Lithuanian learners. The aims of this presentation is to take stock of the frequencies and particularities of nomino-adjectival collocations in the written productions of non-native French learners, without claiming to be exhaustive. Thanks to the corpus at our disposal, we have extracted certain characteristics of nomino-adjectival collocations specific to interlanguage. Nomino-adjectival collocations are characterized by the structure (Adj) + N + (Adj) in the corpus. Collocations of the N + Adj type are more frequent than that of the Adj + N type. The corpus also reveals that the combination of words is not always characteristic of the general language. The process of interference and hybridization can be seen as an essential contamination of collocations, both lexically and syntactically. However, partially set phrases, in other words collocations, are an important way of expressing themselves for learner with B1 level. The results of this study demonstrate that the analysis of collocational constructions can reveal the relationship between competence and performance of speakers. This type of data could also form the basis of various scientific approaches relating to teaching and learning of foreign languages.

Exploring the impact of ethnocentrism on country and brand image: the case of Peugeot

Purpose – It is important to determine the ethnocentric tendencies of Turkish consumers and to reveal the effects of these tendencies on a foreign country and its brand. The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of ethnocentric tendencies of individuals trained in Turkish culture affect the image of a foreign country and its products. For this purpose, research has been carried out on the Peugeot brand of France origin, which is one of the best-selling automobile brands in Turkey. Methodology - Data was collected from 400 people by face to face in the city center of Eskisehir. As the research was conducted only in one city, it does not cover all Turkish consumers. In terms of measurement, country image scale, country product image scale and the CETSCALE were used. In this study Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), t test and ANOVA were performed. Findings- The ethnocentric tendency of Turkish consumers and other relationships were tested with the hypotheses H1, H2, H3a, H3b, H4, H5a, H5b, H6a and H6b. According to the findings, H1, H4, H5b, H6a, H6b were supported but, H2, H3a, H3b and H5a were not supported. Conclusion- The ethnocentric tendency of customers affects only the image of the country of origin, in this case, it negatively affects the image of France. However, it doesn’t affect the general image of French products and brand image statistically. Also, general image of country products and France’s image positively and significantly affects brand image.

Unproductive Co-production: European Integration, the British Film Industry and the Franco-British Co-production Agreement of 1965

The negotiation of bilateral co-production agreements had a major impact on European film-making from the 1950s to the 1970s. These agreements also provided the basis for the closer integration of Europe's film industries within what was then the European Economic Community (EEC). However, the British government was slow to adopt co-production arrangements and British film-makers tended to be more reticent about using them once they were made available. This article examines the British experience of European co-production during this period, focusing on the negotiation and implementation of the Franco-British co-production agreement of 1965 in the context of broader debates about film production and policy within the EEC. Particular attention is given to Someone Behind the Door (1971), a proposed Franco-British film which was ultimately made as a collaboration between French and Italian production companies after delays on the British side caused the French producer to withdraw from the UK. The correspondence collected by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as the proposal for Someone Behind the Door was processed – including input from film union and producer associations – provides a unique insight into the bureaucratic policies and procedures which encumbered European co-production in Britain. While continental film-makers established comfortable habits of cooperation, British co-production was stymied from the outset by a misalignment between the interests of Britain's government, its film unions and its producers.

Akciono istraživanje u funkciji poboljšanja veštine pisanja francuskog jezika

An action research study on improving students’ written production in French as a second language was initiated with the aim of solving the difficulties they en- counter while writing in French. The main goal of this research is to increase the literacy level and improve students’ writing skills in French. Descriptive statistics was used. The techniques used during the research are observation of the current state and monitoring the course of the research through the testing technique. The interview technique, through focus group discussions, was used before and after the conducted action research. The research findings indicate that the application of various interesting and unusual activities leads to positive results. The respondents confirmed they had significantly improved their writing skills in French by being actively engaged in this action research. The results also suggest that participants became more aware of mistakes they often made while writing in French either out of ignorance or insecurity. Students’ attention span and the amount of time they are willing to invest in doing an activity stand out as the key outcomes of the research. The insights into this action research could hopefully help many teachers ‒ edu- cational practitioners to raise the quality of their work so that its practical application in the teaching process is of greater importance.

Temática apocalíptica medieval en lengua francesa

La literatura apocalíptica en lengua francesa durante el periodo medieval no ha recibido la atención que consideramos necesaria al haber sido eclipsada por la producción literaria en francés, por una parte, y la producción apocalíptica en latín, por otra. Con este artículo pretendemos establecer las bases para un estudio de la temática apocalíptica en lengua francesa con la creación de un corpus de manuscritos franceses de la Edad Media conservados en la Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Error Analysis as a Strategy to Improve Writing Production in French as Foreign Language

This article presents the results of an Action-Research that we implemented within a group of students learning French in a Colombian university. Their motivations for learning French were the access to francophone cultures and the academic opportunities they could achieve through learning this language. Hence, as writing is an indispensable language skill for having access to social and academic interchanges in the literate societies, we decided to implement a teaching intervention to improve the writing skills of this group of students. Our action was focused on the improvement of the writing micro skillsby proposing our learners to write four activities based on the adapted book The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and evaluating them through a rubric whose items were those micro-skills. Using this information and following the error analysis method, some lessons were planned for helping students overcome the aspects that made their written communication unclear. In the end, we found that the sequence comprising writing the activities, evaluating and intervening them did not contribute to diminishing the number of errors in their writing compositions, but it enhanced their writing competence by developing students’ awareness of the different elements writing is composed of.

Złoty Globus Jagielloński ze zbiorów Muzeum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego – niezwykły obiekt z fascynującą historią

The Golden Jagiellonian Globe from the Jagiellonian University Museum Collection – an unusual object with a fascinating history “The Golden Jagiellonian Globe” (early 16th century; in the collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum) is the earliest globe of the Earth in the Polish collections and one of the oldest in the world. The oldest known globe of the Earth was made by Martin Behaim in 1492. The second in order are two globes from the same period: the Hunt-Lenox Globe (c. 1510, now in the New York Public Library) and the Jagiellonian Globe. Despite its name, the Jagiellonian Globe is an astronomical instrument – a mechanical armillary sphere. On the orb hiding the mechanism there is a map of the Earth, dated 1510–1511. This object has been sparsely analysed, especially in the last decades. Those analysis that were performed have until now mainly focused on the depicted map and the typology of particular details, though there are also studies on its operation and provenance. Research performed in the 21st century focused on WWII history of the globe.A preliminary analysis of the sphere and the clock mechanism allows a connection with French products from Blois near Paris. The map of the globe, associated with the Italian centre, presents information on geographical discoveries of the time, based on maps by Martin Waldseemüller and letters by Amerigo Vespucci, published in the edition of Ptolemy’s Geography (Saint-Dié, 1507). The map is a twin to the layout of the lands and seas depicted on Hunt-Lenox’s Globe. It is distinguished by a mysterious continent-island, noted on the Kraków globe as “America Noviter Reperta.” The provenance of the globe is known since the 17th century, when the Kraków professor, Jan Brożek, donated it to the Collegium Maius library of the Jagiellonian University. Its fate during World War II, when it was hidden from the Nazis by docent Jadwiga Schoen, is extraordinary. After the war, the globe found its way to the Jagiellonian University Museum, where it has been exhibited ever since.

In situ fast marking study of manila clams (Ruditapes philippinarum)

Arcachon Bay, in the southern Bay of Biscay, is the first French production area of Manila clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) with an annual commercial fisheries production around 400 tons in recent years. This bivalve mollusc was introduced into the bay in the 1980s for aquaculture purpose and quickly succeeded in natural settlement so that its high market value led to the progressive establishment of a perennial fishery from the mid-1990s. Local management plans applied to this species are based on a licensing system for the commercial, protected fishery areas and days of prohibited fishing for both commercial and recreational fishermen. A minimum catch size is also prescribed by European regulation, and so growth rates are an important matter in this context. This work focuses on studying shell growth from the recapture of shells, previously marked using a chemical marker (calcein) and then grown in natural conditions, and was performed in order to determine shell growth patterns. Manila clams were marked by immersion in situ in seawater containing calcein. In order to study the limitations of calcein on the mark readability in situ and manila clam mortality, various exposure times, from 30 minutes to 1 hour, and concentrations, from 50 mg.L-1 to 200 mg.L-1 were tested. After a period of 35 days, 69 growth micro-increments were observed, and, it was found that increment deposition in manila clams occurs with a tidal periodicity. Moreover, this study showed that a method for fast-marking of manila clams, and potentially other species, is feasible in situ.

The First Modern Financial Crises: The South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles in Historical Perspective

The twin South Sea and Mississippi bubbles of 1720 inaugurated the new age of modern finance. Both of the then recently launched British and French stock markets experienced manic run‐ups and crashes that shook their societies to their cores. While the historical consensus attributes these market bubbles to, in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, “insanity born of optimism and self‐serving illusion,” the authors present a more nuanced view. Whatever their role in the bubbles, human folly and greed in this account are not allowed to obscure the powerful influences of institutions, interests, ideologies, and government policies both in giving rise to the crises, and in responding to them.The authors draw on past work and recent analysis to answer questions like the following: Were the market manias of 1719‐20 in fact irrational “bubbles?” If not just fear and greed, what triggered the crashes in 1720? Did political and financial leaders respond appropriately? And how did the resolutions of these crises affect the future financial and economic development of the two nations?In viewing the twin crises of 1720 from a broad historical perspective, the authors' aim is to discover and articulate a more general rule about the role of modern financial crises in “bending the arc” of history. Although powerful states and financial authorities have the potential to accelerate valuable innovations that end up increasing national productivity and wealth, such entanglements of politics and commerce are also liable to catastrophic outcomes, both in laying the grounds for crises and then in responding to them with misguided regulation.The effectiveness and long‐run consequences of such state interventions in commerce are shown to depend on the strength and soundness of a nation's political and social institutions. In unstable and inefficient regimes, which are likely to experience misguided interventions in the first place, the social ramifications can be profoundly destructive. The flawed but effective British reaction to its 1720 crisis—and to the series of banking crises that followed in the 19th century—worked to mollify and win over public opinion, and thus contribute to Britain's continued embrace of financial institutions. By contrast, the outrage of the French populace at the corruption led to the abandonment of modern financial institutions and practices for nearly a century, and to a vilification of banks and bankers that persists to this day, all with major consequences for French productivity and wealth.

Food additives: distribution and co-occurrence in 126 000 food products of the French market

Abstract Background More than 330 food additives (e.g. artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, dyes) are authorized in Europe, with a great variability of use across food products. The objective of this study was to investigate the distribution and co-occurrence of food additives in a large-scale database of foods and beverages available on the French market. Methods The open access Open Food Facts database was used to retrieve the composition of food and beverage products commonly marketed on the French market (n = 126 556), based on the ingredients list. Clustering of food additive variables was used in order to determine groups of additives frequently co-occurring in food products. The clusters were confirmed by network analysis, using the eLasso method. Results 53.8% of food products contained at least 1 food additive and 11.3% at least 5. Food categories most likely to contain food additives (in more than 85% of food items) were artificially sweetened beverages, ice creams, industrial sandwiches, biscuits and cakes. The most frequently used food additives were citric acid, lecithins and modified starches (>10,000 products each). Some food additives with suspected health effects also pertained to the top 50: sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, carrageenan, monosodium glutamate, sulfite ammonia caramel, acesulfame K, sucralose, (di/tri/poly) phosphates, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, potassium sorbate, cochineal, potassium metabisulphite, sodium alginate, and bixin (>800 food products each). We identified 6 clusters of food additives frequently co-occurring in food products. Conclusions Food additives are widespread in industrial French products and some clusters of additives frequently co-occurring in food products were identified. These results pave the way to future etiological studies merging composition data to food consumption data to investigate their association with chronic disease risk, in particular potential 'cocktail effects'. Key messages Food additives are widespread in industrial French products and some clusters of additives frequently co-occurring in food products were identified. These results pave the way to future etiological studies to investigate their association with chronic disease risk, in particular potential ‘cocktail effects’.

Competition, Technological Change and Productivity Gains: A Sectoral Analysis

The empirical relationship between competition intensity and the rate of productivity growth across 30 sectors of the French economy between 1978 and 2015 displays an inverted U-shape. This implies that there exists an optimal level of competition for each sector, defined by the price markup that maximises the growth rate of hourly labour productivity. As there is a significant and strong positive correlation between optimal markups and technical progress rates in each sector, it follows that sectors with high technical progress require higher markups to maximise their labour productivity growth rate. The persistence of non-optimal markups in French sectors is associated with a 0.4% loss in aggregate annual labour productivity growth during the period (1.86%). French long-term productivity growth could have reached 2.25% had markups been at their optimal level. As a result, policies to foster innovation and productivity should aim at enabling the optimal level of markup (or market power), particularly in high-innovation sectors.