The Effect of Speaking Rate on Evidence for Utterance-Final Lengthening

Abstract

The effect of differences in speaking rate on the duration of key words in phrase-final and sentence-final positions was investigated in order to reexamine the absence of utterance-final lengthening in Hebrew. Two native speakers of Hebrew read the original sentences at a relatively slow rate of speaking and at a relatively fast speaking rate. Whereas at the faster rate of speaking, key words in sentence-final position were longer than those in phrase-final position, no evidence for utterance-final lengthening surfaced at the slower rate of speaking. Lengthening in phrase-final position at the slower speaking rate was more than twice that in sentence-final position and occurred independently of pausing. The masking of utterance-final lengthening by phrase-final lengthening at the slower rate of speaking accounts for the original finding of cross-language differences in final lengthening. A relatively small number of pauses were produced following the phrase-final key word at the slower speaking rate, and phrase-final lengthening as a function of a slower tempo was independent of pausing. No differences were found between the magnitude of utterance-final lengthening and lengthening at a slower rate of speaking, indicating that the two processes exert a similar effect on duration.