Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-26T12:54:39.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fast speech as a function of tempo in natural generative phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Shmuel Bolozky
Shmuel Bolozky
Affiliation:
Tel Aviv University and University of Illinois
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Linguists referring to ‘fast speech’ and to ‘normal speech’ often do not share the same definitions of the two terms. ‘Fast speech’ is normally intended as increase in speech tempo that affects the normal/slow norm, but it is also recognized that ‘fast speech phenomena’ occur in casual speech that is not necessarily rapid, and that ‘casualness’ of speech is a complex sociolinguistic notion the components of which are hard to isolate (see, for instance, Dressler, 1974, and Vanecek et al, 1975, for a discussion of the correlation between decreased attention and phonological casualness, and other factors referred to in Dressler, 1975). It is not at all clear what ‘normal speech’ is either. It is usually identified with ‘maximally distinct/differentiated speech’, but as pointed out to me by Arnold Zwicky, this is probably not the case, since there are processes that apply to give 'careful‘ or ‘;emphatic‘ speech (as when the l in please is made syllabic). Zwicky believes that normal speech ‘is related to whatever level of representation (roughly the phonemic) figures in normal rhyming (hat and had will not count as rhymes, even if they are pronounced the same, while stepped and slept will count as rhymes, even if they are pronounced differently, say without the t in slept)’ (personal communication). This paper does not attempt to tackle the problem in its entirety; it will only deal with the tempo aspect of fast speech and with the theoretical implications of increase in rate of speech. The reason for concentrating on tempo is that it can be isolated more easily than the various factors, social and other, involved in casual speech. It will also be assumed that speech tempo is relative, i.e. that one man's normal rate of speech may be another man's fast speech tempo, and that although increase in speech tempo may sometimes result in increased attention and thus in retention of the overall level of formality (Vanecek et al, 1975), the common tendency is for increased reduction and assimilation with the increase in the rate of articulation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , September 1977 , pp. 217 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anttila, R. (1972). An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Dressler, W. U. (1972a). Allegoregeln rechfertigen Lentoregeln: sekundäre Phoneme des Bretonischen. (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 9). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Dressler, W U. (1972b). Methodisches zu Allegro-Regeln. In Dressler, W. U. and Mareš, F. (eds), Phonologica 1972: Akten der zweiten internationalen Phonologie-Tagung, Wien, 5–8 September 1972. Munich/Salzburg: Fink. 219–234.Google Scholar
Dressler, W. U. (1974). Desaktivierung und phonologische Nachlässigkeit. Wiener linguistische Gazette 6. 20–28.Google Scholar
Dressler, W. U. (1975). For a socio-psycho-linguistic theory of phonological variation. In Drachman, G. (ed.), Akten der I. Salzburger Frühlingstagung für Linguistik. Tubingen: Gunter Narr. 13–23.Google Scholar
Hooper, J. (1976a). Constraints on schwa-deletion in American English. (Paper presented at the international conference on historical linguistics, Ustronie, Poland.)Google Scholar
Hooper, J. (1976b). An introduction to natural generative phonology. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kupferberg, I. (1976). Rapid speech phenomena and meaning attainment. M.A. thesis, Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1966). The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). The internal evolution of linguistic rules. In Stockwell, R. P. & Macaulay, R. K. S. (eds), Linguistic change and generative theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 101–171.Google Scholar
Rudes, B. (1976). Lexical representation and variable rules in natural generative phonology. Glossa 10, 111–150.Google Scholar
Semiloff, H. (1973). Vowel reduction and loss in Modern Hebrew fast speech. Hebrew computational linguistics 7, 53–73. Bar-Ilan University.Google Scholar
Stampe, D. (1973). A dissertation on natural phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Vanecek, E. et al. (1975). Bericht über psycholinguistische Experimente zur Sprechvariation. Wiener linguistische Gazette 9. 17–38.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A. M. (1972a). On casual speech. PCLS 8. 607–615.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A. M. (1972b). Note on a phonological hierarchy in English. In Stockwell, R. P. & Macaulay, R. K. S. (eds), Linguistic change and generative theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 275–301.Google Scholar