The meaning of final contours in French Jean-Marie Marandin*, Claire Beyssade**, Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie***, Annie Rialland°, Michel de Fornel• * CNRS, UMR 7110/LLF. ** CNRS, UMR 8129/ Institut Jean Nicod. *** CNRS, UMR 5610/ERSS. ° CNRS, UMR 7018/ILPGA. • EHESS, CELITH. . KEY WORDS Intonation meaning,, Dialogue, Commitment, Speech acts. ABSTRACT We analyze the meaning of intonational contours in French dialogues. We show that it is not related to illocutionary force or impact nor to the speaker's (or the addressee’s) commitment. We propose a dialogical-epistemic approach. It is dialogical in that it crucially involves the "fundamental Speaker / Addressee contextual asymetry" (Ginzburg), i.e. the very fact that conversation participants do not share the same context at all time. It is epistemic in that we claim that contour meaning is crucially sensitive to the notion of anticipated revision (by the speaker). The main divide between falling and non-falling contours is correlated to the anticipation publicly signalled by the speaker that her utterance may trigger a revision in the current exchange of turns. The proposal is based on the analysis of actual utterances (phone calls, interviews, radio programs). 0. Introduction Even though descriptive linguistics has accumulated a lot of evidence against the claim that contours are somehow linked to the marking of illocutionary contrasts in French, the expressions "assertion intonation" or "question intonation" are still in use, which seems to imply that there is some intrinsic link between the formal contrast "falling vs rising contour" and the illocutionary divide between "asserting vs questioning". There is indeed a general tendency to map the contrast "falling vs rising contour" onto the contrast "asserting vs questioning" and to claim that intonation is sensitive to the basic usages of language (provide information, get information, get others do something, etc.). But, if one takes seriously the results of empirical observations, the data are the following. The prototypical assertion – i.e. a declarative sentence which denotes a proposition whose uttering commits the speaker for current purposes and compels the addressee to accept it – is regularly produced with a falling contour. The prototypical question de confirmation – i.e. a declarative sentence which requests a response from the addressee in a way that seems to be identical to what interrogatives do — is regularly produced with a rising or a rising-falling contour in French. Nevertheless, there are cases of assertion with a rising contour and cases of question de confirmation with a falling contour. Indeed, they are less frequent, but this may be linked to the simple fact that the contexts in which they are appropriate are less frequent. Thus such cases should not be discarded without examination. Hence, the perspective must be