Baker, R. E., & Bradlow, A. R. (2009). Variability in word duration as a function of probability, speech style, and prosody. Language and Speech, 52(4), 391–413.
Presentation: Thomas
Summary: Angela
Depending on how much effort one puts into the production of speech, speech can be roughly classified as being hyper-articulated or hypo-articulated. The former involves increased articulatory effort while the latter involves reduced articulatory effort. Whether a speaker uses hyper- or hypo- effort in articulation seemed to be determined by factors such as lexical frequency, previous mention, speech style, and prosody. Therefore, the authors explored the effects of these aforementioned factors on word duration, which when longer, signals more articulatory effort, and when shorter, designates less articulatory effort. With regards to lexical frequency, results indicated that high frequency words were indeed shorter compared with low frequency words. Yet lexical frequency was not the only factor that had an impact on word duration. In terms of previous mention, first mention words were also found to be significantly longer than second mention words. In addition, speech style was also found to play a role. In particular, clear speech manifested longer word duration compared with plain speech. On the other hand, while prosody had an effect on word duration, the effects of the other factors were retained after controlling for word stress level. This showed that the influence of probability is robust and prosody is not the sole element which influences word duration as previously conceived.
