Some micro and macro effects of tempo change on timing in French

Abstract

A number of factors influence the temporal organization of connected speech. One such factor, tempo change, is an important variable whose effects on segment and pause duration may highlight important language-specific and language-universal features of speech timing. When French speakers are asked to read a passage at increasing tempo from slow to normal to fast, they modify their pause behavior substantially. In addition, consonant and vowel segment durations are compressed, but not to the same degree. However, the overall levels of vowel compression are lower than reported for other languages. On the one hand this is probably due to the relatively low values for articulation rate reported in this experiment. On the other hand, they may be related to the smaller degree of vowel reduction that occurs in French under conditions of increased tempo. Further examination of language-specific differences of this kind may contribute to the development of more descriptively accurate typologies of speech timing. © Mouton de Gruyter