Experimental phonetic research on speech rhythm seems to have reached an impasse. Recently, this research field has tended to investigate produced (rather than perceived) rhythm, focussing on timing, i.e. duration as an acoustic cue, and has not considered that rhythm perception might be influenced by native language. Yet evidence from other areas of phonetics, and other disciplines, suggests that an investigation of rhythm is needed which (i) focuses on listeners' perception, (ii) acknowledges the role of several acoustic cues, and (iii) explores whether the relative significance of these cues differs between languages. This thesis, the originality of which derives from its adoption of these three perspectives combined, indicates new directions for progress. A series of perceptual experiments investigated the interaction of duration and f0 as perceptual cues to prosody in languages with different prosodic structures - Swiss German, Swiss French, and French (i.e. from France). The first experiment demonstrated that a dynamic f0 increases perceived syllable duration in contextually isolated pairs of monosyllables, for all three language groups. The second experiment found that dynamic f0 and increased duration interact as cues to rhythmic groups in series of monosyllabic digits and letters; the two cues were significantly more effective than one when heard simultaneously, but significantly less effective than one when heard in conflicting positions around the rhythmic-group boundary location, and native language influenced whether f0 or duration was the more effective cue. These two experiments laid the basis for the third, which directly addressed rhythm. Listeners were asked to judge the rhythmicality of sentences with systematic duration and f0 manipulations; the results provide evidence that duration and f0 are interdependent cues in rhythm perception, and that the weighting of each cue varies in different languages. A fourth experiment applied the perceptual results to production data, to develop a rhythm metric which captures the multi-dimensional and language-specific nature of perceived rhythm in speech production. These findings have the important implication that if future phonetic research on rhythm follows these new perspectives, it may circumvent the impasse and advance our knowledge and model of speech rhythm.

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This thesis evaluated a new speech rhythm measure, the Lexical Judgement Task (LJT), by conducting a series of cross-sectional studies. It was examined whether the LJT could be used with children from different age groups, whether associations between speech rhythm sensitivity, phonological awareness and reading skills could be observed and whether speech rhythm sensitivity could predict reading skills cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Study 1 piloted the LJT with 5- to 9-year-old children and assessed the relationship between poor and good readers‟ speech rhythm sensitivity and their reading skills. Analyses showed that poor readers performed lower on the task compared to good readers, indicating that reduced stress sensitivity was related to lower reading proficiency. Examination of the task indicated potential fatigue effects, thus the task was shortened, which resulted in a 12-item tasks that was used through the remainder of the studies. Children between 4- and 11-years old were assessed in three following studies and results showed differential associations between stress sensitivity and reading (related) skills; indicating an involvement of maturation in stress sensitivity‟s development but also highlighting that stress sensitivity is involved in reading skills differently across varying ages. The final study in this thesis examined the longitudinal effect of stress sensitivity on reading skills and it was found that stress sensitivity was not able to account for growth in reading skills, independently from vocabulary or phonological processing skills; although concurrently unique variance in reading skills was accountable to stress sensitivity. Overall, this thesis highlights the importance of stress sensitivity in children‟s reading development, offers supporting evidence for previously found associations between this skills and reading abilities and demonstrates the need to incorporate speech rhythm sensitivity in theoretical reading development models.

Inspired by Lin and Huang’s (2009) rhythmic study of Chinese dialects, this study examines speech rhythm of 21 Chinese dialects from three perspectives, timing, melody, and phonological structure. The 21 dialects belong to four major groups of Chinese and their respective sub-groups. The four major groups are Mandarin, Wu, Min, and Cantonese. Nine duration-based and four pitch-based metrics are used to quantify timing and melody, respectively. Four phonological structure-based metrics are used to explore the relationships between syllable structure and timing and between tone structure and melody. All the metrics are paired up according to five categories, duration-only, pitch-only, duration-pitch, duration-syllable, pitch-tone, and each pair is subject to a correlation analysis. Then timing and melody patterns of the Chinese dialects are determined by correlation patterns of relevant metric pairs. The main findings of this study are as follows: 1) Timing and melody patterns of the Chinese dialects are far from homogenous across major groups and melody patterns are more distinct than timing patterns; 2) No single metric pair is able to quantify speech rhythm consistently for all the Chinese dialects; nonetheless, pitch-based metric pairs fare better than duration-based ones; 3) Syllable-timedness and melodiousness are correlated positively for all the major groups except for Wu; 4) Phonological structure plays little role in shaping timing and melody patterns of most Chinese dialects. The above findings are both expected and unexpected. They are expected in the sense that rhythmic perception invovles multiple acoustic cues, so it comes as no surprise that not all rhythmic metrics are successful in quantifying Chinese rhythm. They are unexpected for the reason that all the metrics are developed based more or less on phonological structure, yet the rhythmic patterns they reveal do not correspond to the structure affinity or group membership of the Chinese dialects. Overall, the findings suggest that pitch is a more import cue than duration to Chinese rhythm. As the first study of Chinese rhythm across multiple dialects and from different perspectives, this study not only lays a methodological foundation for future research but also contributes to our in-depth understanding of Chinese dialects. / Graduate / 0290 / yali@uvic.ca

The importance of rhythm for speech communication was recognised by ancient orators. Since the forties of the last century, this phenomenon has become more systematic subject of interest of Speech Sciences and there has been a rapid development in this research area in the last decade. Throughout the years concerned, however, this concept was somewhat hazy due to the context, in which it was used in some studies. This master thesis begins with a selective overview of approaches to given issue in the field of phonetic research, trying to identify their critical moments, noticing used methodology and applicability of outputs in particular. Special attention is paid to the rhythmic aspects of Czech and issues of their description. We also bring a message of selected studies, which have already been made in this respect. The aim of this work lies in the experimental study focused on assessment of philologically oriented students' ability to imitate speech rhythm according to given pattern in following modes - word by word, on the monotone syllable and by tapping. The results confirmed the hypothesis that the imitation accuracy depends on the type of repetition - the overall data show significant differences in terms of the lowest, higher and the highest deviations from the model, respectively. To a...

Relative timing ratios are a useful measure for determining the temporal regularities of speech. The timing intervals that make up these ratios are thought to be important when creating the motor plan for an utterance (Weismer & Fennell, 1985). In fact, these ratios have been shown to be remarkably stable, even when speakers deliberately increase their rate (Tuller & Kelso, 1984; Weismer & Fennell, 1985). The constancy of these ratios also has been demonstrated in speakers with known speech timing disturbances, like the dysarthrias associated with Parkinson's and Huntington's disease (Goberman & McMillan; Ludlow, Connor, & Bassich, 1987; Weismer & Fennell, 1985), apraxia (Weismer & Fennell, 1985), and stuttering (Prosek, Montgomery, & Walden, 1988). However, a slowed rate of speech has been noted to induce variability in relative timing (Clark, 1995). The current investigation was designed to further investigate the impact of a slow rate on relative timing, as well as the impact of a different type of dysarthria on the production of these ratios. Eleven participants with MS and ten healthy controls participated. After screening the participants with MS for cognitive abilities and degree of dysathria, they produced four sentences at three different rates of speech: conversational, fast, and slow. Age-matched controls only provided the rate-controlled sentences. Relative timing ratios were extracted and an analysis of variance was conducted for each sentence to note the effects of speech rate, ratio type, and speaker condition on relative timing. The results revealed that relative timing was not constant in the slow rate for any of the participants. The noted variability in slow speech was attributed to vowel characteristics and sentence length. Finally, people with MS demonstrated larger relative timing ratios than their healthy peers when producing lengthier or motorically complex sentences. Consistent with previous research (Clark, 1995), these results indicated that relative timing ratios were not constant when rate was slowed. Hence, use of a reduced rate may have triggered the critical change required to alter relative timing. This difference may also correspond to a topological shift in the cortical planning of the utterance. These findings provide support for the use of slowed speech in the treatment of dysarthria and other speech timing disorders. It may be that slowed speech allows the speaker to access a motor plan better suited to his impaired muscular system.

The study aims to describe and to explain some temporal aspects of the rhythmic structure of Swedish, and to compare Swedish, Spanish, and Finnish, characterized as rhythmically different languages. The temporal effects of some manipulations believed to have consequences for rhythm were studied in a series of experiments based on sets of Swedish sentences. These manipulations included the length of stress groups - the number of unstressed syllables between stressed ones - and their structural properties. Also the length of the surrounding stress group was varied, as well as speech rate. The results indicated the presence of several interacting factors. First, there was an inverse relation between the length of the phrase and the duration of the stress group: phrase-lenqth adjustments. Ihe effects were similar to those obtained when speech rate was independently varied. Secondly, adjacent stress groups were adjusted so that differences of duration were counteracted: stress-qroup adjustments. In addition, in longer stress groups rhythmic alternation between unstressed syllables occurred. Finally, there was an interplay between rhythm and language structure. This was evident from the stability of the temporal manifestations of the quantity distinction and the distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables irrespective of the experimental manipulations. The results were interpreted in terms of a process model of speech rhythm, the generality of which was considered in the cross-language comparisons. The presence of similar temporal effects in all three languages was taken to support assumptions of language-independent processing constraints. Deviations from the general pattern were explainable in terms of differences of language structure and adjustments to preserve important structural properties, especially quantity relations. / <p>Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1985</p> / digitalisering@umu

The goal of this thesis was to test the ability of speech imitation in terms of temporal accuracy in two age groups of children. The first age group comprised 8 girls and 8 boys at the age of 10 to 11 years; the second group consisted of 8 girls and 8 boys at the age of 12 to 13 years. For the purpose of the experiment a perception-production test was created - it consisted of six, nine and twelve syllabic declarative sentences which contained two, three and four trisyllabic stress- groups. The task of the participating children was to repeat the sentences in three manners: in exactly the same words as they had heard them, and then by using the syllable /na/ and /ba/. Even though the children were able to meet the task, in some cases deviations occurred, such as deformations of the sentences in a certain way. Accuracy of imitation was investigated through average deviations from the model sentences. Based on the obtained values we identified the factors of length and composition of the task items and also the manner and order of imitation. We were also interested whether age and gender of respondents affect the accuracy of imitation. Key words speech rhythm, tempo, duration, stress-group, average deviation, imitation, children

The main objective of this thesis is to explore the relationships between the phonotactic structure of the Czech stress-group and the rhythm of speech. Three most frequent consonantal-vocalic structures of Czech two-syllable stress-groups were selected for the purposes of this thesis: CVCV, CVCCV and CVCCV. In an auditory experiment, which contained the comparison of two stress-groups or the comparison of a stress-group and a low-frequency shadow of a stress-group, the respondents established how similar the rhythm of each couple of stress-groups sounded. The results indicate that the position of a consonantal cluster within the stress-group is the strongest phonotactic factor in perception of the rhythmic similarity. The number of consonants within a consonantal cluster and the presence of a long vowel in both stress- groups were considered weaker factors for perceiving the rhythmic similarity by the respondents. Possibilities for a follow-up research were proposed for the factors that did not reach statistical significance, i.e., the difference in sonority or voicing of consonants. Keywords: speech rhythm, stress-group, phonotactics, consonantal-vocalic structure, Czech

The purpose of the study was to investigate the multi-sensory responses of children to symbolizing musical sound through speech rhythm patterns. Speech rhythm patterns consist of the number of syllables and the stress/nonstress relationships of these syllables in a word or a phrase. The research problems were (1) to determine children's responses to speech rhythm patterns according to the differential sensory modes used; (2) to determine the children's responses to speech rhythm patterns by age, and (3) to compare children's responses to speech rhythm patterns by age and sensory modes.