The prominence of the concept of utterance has emerged from some recent grammars based on corpora of speech. This paper deals with a new definition of utterance as the realization of an illocutionary value and on the ground of the hypothesis of an existing equivalence between units belonging to the field of human actions (acts) and linguistic units (utterances). Furthermore it is proposed a definition of illocution, which diverges from that of Searle. This kind of definition brings to a new taxonomy of illocution on an attitudinal ground (affect) and on the basis of pragmatic, semiologic and cognitive features. Results of experimental researches on speech corpora are provided: with the recognition of the existing equivalence between utterance and illocution it is possible to verify the concrete variation of acts and to identify intonational contours which are singularly devoted to the expression of illocution. This brings to the formulation of a first repertoire of intonational contours with illocutionary value. Some of these contours, studied on the basis of this theoretical approach, are showed.

The goal of this study is to determine whether prosody contributes to the discrimination of meaning in sentences with French ‘également’, when it is used with the additive function of ‘also’, given the crucial role prosody plays in the use of additive particles in some other languages. In order to verify the role of prosody, we have run an experimental study based on a reading task: 20 native speakers were recorded while reading a set of contextualized sentences with ‘également’ placed in structurally ambiguous positions. The results show the presence of different types of prosodic correlates associated with ‘également’, but also that they are not exploited in a systematic way.