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Syntactic probabilities affect pronunciation variation in spontaneous speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Harry Tily ,
Susanne Gahl ,
Inbal Arnon ,
Neal Snider ,
Anubha Kothari  and
Joan Bresnan
Harry Tily*
Affiliation:
Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Rochester
Susanne Gahl*
Affiliation:
Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Rochester
Inbal Arnon
Affiliation:
Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Rochester
Neal Snider
Affiliation:
Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Rochester
Anubha Kothari
Affiliation:
Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Rochester
Joan Bresnan
Affiliation:
Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Rochester
*
Correspondence addresses: Harry Tily, Linguistics, Margaret Jacks Hall, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA. E-mail: hjt@stanford.edu
Linguistics, Margaret Jacks Hall, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA. E-mail: gahl@berkeley.edu.
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Abstract

Speakers frequently have a choice among multiple ways of expressing one and the same thought. When choosing between syntactic constructions for expressing a given meaning, speakers are sensitive to probabilistic tendencies for syntactic, semantic or contextual properties of an utterance to favor one construction or another. Taken together, such tendencies may align to make one construction overwhelmingly more probable, marginally more probable, or no more probable than another. Here, we present evidence that acoustic features of spontaneous speech reflect these probabilities: when speakers choose a less probable construction, they are more likely to be disfluent, and their fluent words are likely to have a relatively longer duration. Conversely, words in more probable constructions are shorter and spoken more fluently. Our findings suggest that the differing probabilities of a syntactic construction in context are not epiphenomenal, but reflect a part of a speakers' knowledge of their language.

Keywords

pronunciation variationgradiencedisfluencyditransitiveword durationspeech productionsyntactic alternation
Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 147 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2009

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