Interaction between Test Word Duration and Length of Utterance

Abstract

It has been found that in Dutch and Swedish, the duration of the syllable nucleus decreases as the number of syllables which remain to be produced in the word at the beginning of the syllable concerned increases. The present study was designed to test, for English, whether this principle holds for whole utterances. Four lists of words, totaling 122 items, were recorded by two speakers in three different frames. The duration of words placed in the basic frame “Say … instead” was compared with the durations of the same words placed in the frames “Sometimes it's useful to say the word … instead” and “The word … is sometimes a useful example.” The results indicate that at the utterance level, the length of the whole utterance has a greater effect on the duration of the test words than the number of syllables preceding or following the test word in the frame.