FRANÇOIS PICARD (Iremus, University Paris 4 Sorbonne, France)

The Archives de la Parole or Spoken Archives have been founded by the French historian of French language and grammarian Ferdinand Brunot at Sorbonne university in 1911. Using a Pathéphone phonograph, he recorded spoken or singing voices, he classified in main sections: I for “interprètes”, O for “orateurs”, L for «langues”, D for “dialectes”. Taking it as a solid corpus, we analyse it using digital tools according to the relation between pitch, intensity and timbre, and find it possible through strong descriptors to recover local, culturally meaningful, categories. The question of whether this new categorisation could be universal will be asked.sessions.