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This study investigates listeners' ability to track individual speakers' habitual speech rate in a dialogue and adjust their perception of durational contrasts. Previous studies that found such adjustments are inconclusive as adjustments can be attributed to exemplars of target structures in the dialogue rather than perceptual calibration of habitual speech rates. In this study, English listeners were presented with a dialogue between a fast and slow speaker, containing no stressed syllable-initial voiceless stops. Listeners then categorized /pi/-/bi/ syllables differing along a voice onset time continuum. Results did not show conclusive evidence that listeners' response differed systematically depending on speakers' habitual speech rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated a sound change in progress by which the Central Bavarian dialect feature of complementary length between consonant and the preceding vowel is giving way to the unrestricted combination possibility of long (Vː) and short (V) vowels with following longer fortis (Cː) and shorter lenis (C) stops, respectively. This 2 × 2 system is also found in the standard variety of German. While previous studies have regarded any such findings of convergence toward Standard German as being a result of language contact, the present study specifically tested the possibility of fast-speech-induced hypoarticulation being a system-internal driver of this change. The focus of this study was on acoustic cues to the postvocalic stop. Following the apparent-time paradigm, acoustic analyses of 10 younger and 10 older dialect speakers revealed that (1) younger dialect speakers produced both VC and VːCː (both formerly illegal in the dialect), but (2) older dialect speakers produced only VːCː sequences with duration patterns similar to those of the control group of 10 Standard German speakers. Analyses of various dependent variables further showed (3) the (apparently) delayed emergence of aspiration as an additional cue to the fortis–lenis contrast in Western Central Bavarian particularly in younger dialect speakers, (4) no considerable effect of speech rate on the dispersion of and overlap between any of the four vowel-plus-stop combinations, and (5) the irregular spread of this change that appears to be gradual. As such, the findings support a model of linguistic change that also accounts for gradual changes in dialect borrowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among other characteristics, voiced and voiceless consonants differ in voice onset time (VOT; Lisker & Abramson, 1964). In addition, in English, voiced consonants are typically followed by longer vowels than their unvoiced counterparts (Allen & Miller, 1999). In Spanish, this relationship is less systematic (Zimmerman & Sapon, 1958). In two experiments, we investigated perceptual sensitivities of English and Spanish native speakers to following vowel length (VL) in categorizing syllables that ranged from a prevoiced bilabial stop [ba] to a long-lag bilabial stop [pa]. According to our results, English speakers show sensitivity to following vowels with VLs falling within an English-typical range (Experiment 1), but not when vowels are shorter and in a Spanish-typical range (Experiment 2). Interestingly, Spanish native speakers do not show sensitivity to following VL in either condition. These results suggest that VOT-VL tradeoffs in perception reflect phonological sensitivities of listeners and are not reducible to speech rate compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the independent contribution of speech rate and speech rhythm to perceived foreign accent. To address this issue we used a resynthesis technique that allows neutralizing segmental and tonal idiosyncrasies between identical sentences produced by French learners of English at different proficiency levels and maintaining the idiosyncrasies pertaining to prosodic timing patterns. We created stimuli that (1) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rhythm while controlling for the differences in speech rate between the utterances; (2) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rate while controlling for the differences in speech rhythm between the utterances; and (3) preserved the idiosyncrasies both in speech rate and speech rhythm. All the stimuli were created in intoned (with imposed intonational contour) and flat (with monotonized, constant F0) conditions. The original and the resynthesized sentences were rated by native speakers of English for degree of foreign accent. We found that both speech rate and speech rhythm influence the degree of perceived foreign accent, but the effect of speech rhythm is larger than that of speech rate. We also found that intonation enhances the perception of fine differences in rhythmic patterns but reduces the perceptual salience of fine differences in speech rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of how synchronic variation in intervocalic voicing of voiceless obstruents, as observed in several languages (e.g., Rome Italian /lato/ [lato] ~ [lado]), may initiate and give rise to a regular sound change (e.g., /t/ > /d/ between vowels). We hypothesize that a biomechanically motivated linkage between male gender, speech rate, and voicing may provide a way to accelerate the spread of the phenomenon and lead to an eventual generalized recategorization. In order to explore this hypothesis, first we reanalyze the results of a previous study on intervocalic voicing in Spanish, focusing on individual differences and, in particular, the possible role of gender. Then we report on a study of the same phenomenon in Basque, focusing also on interspeaker variation. Finally, we report on a controlled experiment where speech rate was manipulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates speech rate in two standard national varieties of Dutch on the basis of 160 15 mins conversations with native speakers who belong to four different regions in the Netherlands and four in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders). Speech rate was quantified as articulation rate and speaking rate, both expressed as the number of syllables per second (syll/s). The results show a significant effect of speakers' country of origin: subjects in the Netherlands speak 16% faster than subjects in Belgium (articulation: 5.05 vs. 4.23 syll/s, speaking: 4.23 vs. 4.00 syll/s). In addition, the independent variable sex was also found to be significant: on average, men speak 6% faster than women (articulation: 4.79 vs. 4.50 syll/s, speaking: 4.23 vs. 4.01 syll/s). The independent variable age was significant too: younger subjects speak 5% faster than older ones (articulation: 4.78 vs. 4.52 syll/s, speaking: 4.23 vs. 4.01 syll/s). The findings of this study confirm the traditional view that speech rate is determined by extralinguistic variables, but also suggest that there may be intrinsic tempo differences between language varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stetson (1951) noted that repeating singleton coda consonants at fast speech rates makes them be perceived as onset consonants affiliated with a following vowel. The current study documents the perception of rate- induced resyllabification, as well as what temporal properties give rise to the perception of syllable affiliation. Stimuli were extracted from a previous study of repeated stop + vowel and vowel + stop syllables (de Jong, 2001a, 2001b). Forced-choice identification tasks show that slow repetitions are clearly distinguished. As speakers increase rate, they reach a point after which listeners disagree as to the affiliation of the stop. This pattern is found for voiced and voiceless consonants using different stimulus extraction techniques. Acoustic models of the identifications indicate that the sudden shift in syllabification occurs with the loss of an acoustic hiatus between successive syllables. Acoustic models of the fast rate identifications indicate various other qualities, such as consonant voicing, affect the probability that the consonants will be perceived as onsets. These results indicate a model of syllabic affiliation where specific juncture-marking aspects of the signal dominate parsing, and in their absence other differences provide additional, weaker cues to syllabic affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research reported in this article is an attempt to elucidate the functions of dynamic speech rates as contextualization cues in conversational Japanese. The article claims that changes in the speech rate in conversational Japanese have a definite potential for cuing the structure of information collaboratively constructed by participants of a conversation. When people engage in a conversation, they not only express, by means of uttering words and sentences, what they intend to get across to other conversants about the topics of discourse, but also express, both intentionally and unintentionally, messages concerned with the situation in which the conversation is taking place. This second type of expression in many ways directs how the first type of expression is to be interpreted by the conversants. The second type of expression is usually carried out through nonreferential and nonlexical means such as prosody, gestures/postures, gaze, and backchannels. Several sociolinguists introduced the notion of contextualization to capture these processes in everyday language use, and called the signals involved in expressions of the second type contextualization cues.

Examines the ability of listeners to judge speaker height and weight from speech samples. Correlations between estimated height/weight and actual height/weight for male speakers; Regression analysis of speech rate; Formant frequency values.

Discusses durational and spectral measures of anticipatory as well as perseverative coarticulation that were obtained from the acoustic speech signal of German sentence utterances produced by young female speakers at comfortable and at slowed speech rate. Different patterns of durational and spectral features; Inter-speaker variability; Suggestion that different mechanisms underlie anticipatory and perseverative coarticulation.

Differentiates between effects of phonetic implementation and effects of phonological structure in the adjustment of articularity trajectories to varying speech rate. Analysis of cross-linguistic data on coarticulatory nasalization in American English and Spanish; Velocity of velar port opening and closing gestures; Variations in speech rate.