Plug, L and Smith, R (2017) Phonological complexity, segment rate and speech tempo perception. In: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. Interspeech 2017, 20-24 Aug 2017, Stockholm, Sweden. International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) , pp. 1403-1406.
Abstract
Studies of speech tempo commonly use syllable or segment rate as a proxy measure for perceived tempo. In languages whose phonologies allow substantial syllable complexity these measures can produce figures on quite different scales; however, little is known about the correlation between syllable and segment rate measurements on the one hand and naïve listeners’ tempo judgements on the other. We follow up on the findings of one relevant study on German [1], which suggest that listeners attend to both syllable and segment rates in making tempo estimates, through a weighted average of the rates in which syllable rate carries more weight. We report on an experiment in which we manipulate phonological complexity in English utterance pairs that are constant in syllable rate. Listeners decide for each pair which utterance sounds faster. Our results suggest that differences in segment rate that do not correspond to differences in syllable rate have little impact on perceived speech tempo in English.
Metadata
Item Type: | Proceedings Paper |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 ISCA. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | phonetics, speech perception, tempo, syllable structure |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > Linguistics & Phonetics (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number British Academy SG151790 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jun 2017 11:41 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jan 2018 10:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) |
Identification Number: | 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-987 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:117239 |