Abstract
Speech rhythm varies noticeably from language to language, and within the same language as a function of numerous linguistic, prosodic and speaker-dependent factors, among which is the speaker’s age. Cross-sectional studies comparing the acoustic characteristics of young and old voices have documented that healthy aging affects speech rhythm variability. This kind of studies, however, presents one fundamental limitation: They group together people with different life experiences, healthy conditions and aging rate. This makes it very difficult to disentangle the effect of aging from that of other factors when interpreting the rhythmic differences between younger and older adults. In the present paper, we overcame such difficulty by tracing rhythmic variability within one single individual longitudinally. We examined 5 public talks held by Noam Chomsky, from when he was 40 to when he was 89. Within-speaker rhythmic variability was quantified through a variety of rate measures (segment/consonant and vowel rate) and rhythmic metrics (%V, %Vn, nPVI-V, n-PVI-C). The results showed that physiological aging affected speech rate measures, but not the durational characteristics of vocalic and consonantal intervals. More longitudinal data from numerous speakers of the same language are necessary to identify generalizable patterns in age-related rhythmic variability.
Highlights
Cross-linguistic research comparing the rhythmic variability between children and adults have shown that the durational characteristics of consonantal and vocalic intervals ( CV intervals) vary greatly based on the speaker’s age
The researchers found that compared to adult speech rhythm: a) child speech rhythm in early English learners is more syllable-timed, namely it presents higher proportion over which speech is vocalic (%V) and lower variability in vocalic intervals (e.g., deltaV); b) over time child speech rhythm approximates to the adult stress-timed profile; c) no drastic developmental changes occur in the speech rhythm of children speaking syllable-timed languages
Analyzing the development of speech rhythm in monolingual British English children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years old, Polyanskaya and Ordin (2015) found that the consonantal interval durational variability reaches the values of adult monolinguals at the age of 8, syllable variability is mastered by the age of 10–11, and the acquisition of vocalic intervals gradually develops with increasing age
Summary
Over the last decades language-specific rhythmic characteristics have been related either to the durational properties of consonantal, vocalic or voicing intervals,(Dellwo, 2006; Dellwo & Fourcin, 2013; Grabe & Low, 2002; Ramus, Nespor, & Mehler, 1999; White & Mattys, 2007) or to the speech amplitude envelope (ENV) characteristics (He & Dellwo, 2014, 2016, 2017; Tilsen & Arvaniti, 2013), and a plethora of acoustic measures have2 Elisa Pellegrino been designed to quantify between-language rhythmic variability. Over the last decades language-specific rhythmic characteristics have been related either to the durational properties of consonantal, vocalic or voicing intervals,. Cross-linguistic research comparing the rhythmic variability between children and adults have shown that the durational characteristics of consonantal and vocalic intervals ( CV intervals) vary greatly based on the speaker’s age. Analyzing the development of speech rhythm in monolingual British English children ranging in age from 4 to 11 years old, Polyanskaya and Ordin (2015) found that the consonantal interval durational variability reaches the values of adult monolinguals at the age of 8, syllable variability is mastered by the age of 10–11, and the acquisition of vocalic intervals gradually develops with increasing age. Using the same corpus as in Polyanskaya and Ordin (2015), He (2018) found that the scores of metrics based on mean syllable intensity variability (stdev-I, and PVI-I) are higher in children than in adults and that syllable intensity variability decreases from intermediate-aged children to older children
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