Second mention reduction in Indian, English, and Korean

Abstract

Phonetic reduction of the second relative to the first mention of a word in a discourse (Second Mention Reduction, or SMR) is a well‐documented feature of spoken American English (AE). This phenomenon could be mediated by discourse‐level prosodic structure: second mentions are reduced because they are less likely than first mentions to be accented in AE; or it could occur independently of prosodic structure. Impressionistic studies indicate that Indian English (IE) speakers do not deaccent second mentions like AE speakers [J. Gumperz, Discourse Strategies (1982)]. Korean marks information structure through phrasing and word order rather than pitch accents. Therefore, SMR in these languages would support a direct link between lexical probability and duration. Six IE speakers read five paragraphs containing 59 repeated words, and five Korean speakers read a Korean translation of one of these paragraphs. IE speakers were significantly less likely to deaccent second mentions than AE speakers (sign‐test, p<.05), and four IE speakers had identical accenting rates for both mentions, providing empirical evidence that IE speakers do not deaccent second mentions. Moreover, significant SMR was found in both Korean (W=43, p<.05) and IE (W=1340, p<.001), suggesting that probabilistic effects on word duration are not mediated by prosodic prominence.