The model used is a rigid-ion model with an effective ionic charge including general interactions for nearest and next nearest neighbours and long range Coulomb interactions. It provides a good fit with recent neutron data for ZnTe and CdTe on condition that no hypothesis is made a priori on the interatomic forces and that the eleven parameters given by the model are used. E s wird ein Modell starrer Ionen mit einer effektiven Ionenladung benutzt, unter Einbeziehung allgemeiner Wechselwirkungen fur nachste und iibernachste Nachbarn und langreichweitiger Coulomb-Wechselwirkungen. Es liefert eine gute Anpassung an neuere Neutronendaten fur ZnTe und CdTe unter der Voraussetzung, dal3 a priori keine Hypothese iiber die interatomaren Krafte gemacht wird, und dal3 die elf Parameter, die das Modell liefert, benutzt werden.A rigid-ion model (RIM) with four parameters was used to calculate the phonon dispersion curves for ZnTe [5] and to study localized substitutional impurity modes in compounds having zincblende structure including CdTe and ZnTe [B]. A seven-parameter RIM was used later to calculate the CdTe and ZnTe phonon dispersion curves [7]. I n both cases the determination of the force constants was based only on optical data and on experimental values of the elastic constants Cll, C12, Cd4, and a noticeable lack of agreement was found between the phonon dispersion curves thus calculated and the neutron scattering data obtained afterwards [8,9].Kunc [lo, 111 gave a dynamic description of 15 compounds having the zincblende crystal structure; these include ZnS, ZnSe, CdTe, ZnTe but for the last two, in the absence of neutron scattering data, the description was incomplete. l) B.P. 2, 91 190 Gif-sur-Yvette. } 352 52 113-6. Discussion A first observation is the high sensitivity of the C branches to the values of the parameters El and E,. This is illustrated by the CdTe phonon dispersion curves calculated for El = E, = 0, using the values of Table 1 for the other parameters. The conclusion is that a priori hypotheses on short-range forces reducing the number of parameters (for instance the assumption of central