Although a great many textbooks of general phonetics deal with the articulation and the acoustics of speech sounds, these works generally deal only briefly with the facts of suprasegmental phonetics--rythm, accent, and intonation. The author feels "it is precisely suprasegmental phonetics which is the most important in our French classes because not only do modern methods based on the spoken language rely upon dialogs where intonation is very important, but also the successful acquisition of the phenomena of segmental phonetics is not really possible except in a given melodic context." This analysis of the suprasegmental components of the sentence is divided into six chapters, of which the first three study the problems from the point of view of general phonetics, and the last three deal exclusively with French. Each chapter concludes with "Consequences for Teaching," which draws practical conclusions from what precedes. Because the author considers this study as a preliminary working paper, he has presented it in detailed outline, "telegraphic" form. (This study is written in French.) (AMM)