Syllable rate vs. segment rate in perceived speech rate
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2020/11/0005/000420Keywords:
syllable rate, segment rate, syllable complexity, speech rate, perceptionAbstract
This study examines the impact of differences in segment rate—which do not correspond to differences in syllable rate—on perceived speech rate in an unfamiliar language. Japanese speakers who were unfamiliar with Arabic judged the speech rate of Arabic stimuli featuring two levels of syllable complexity on a 1-7 scale. The participants perceived the complex syllable stimuli as being faster than the simple syllable stimuli. This is interpreted as evidence that differences in segment rate do influence speech rate perception. Hence, the prominence of syllable rate over segment rate for perceiving speech rate in some previous studies was likely due to extraneous factors associated with the specific stimuli and participants in those studies.
References
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Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
