Effects of speech rate on segment production in Standard Chinese
LI Yinghao1, KONG Jiangping2
1. Foreign Languages College, Yanbian University, Yanji 133001, China;
2. Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing 100871
Abstract：The phonetic realization of speech segments and the timing relation of the articulations of contiguous segments vary for different speech rates. How the speech rate affects the segmental articulations in Standard Chinese is still not very understood. This paper studies the effect of the speech rate on the segment production in Standard Chinese using electropalatography to focus on the articulatory timing relation in heterorganic consonant clusters/η#C2/and segment articulations in V1#C2V2. The results show that the absolute latency and the gestural overlap of the consonant clusters increases with faster speech rates. Significant linear relations were found between the articulatory or acoustic length for the segments. Effect of the speech rate on the consonantal displacement depended on the place and manner of the articulation. Gestural weakening of vowels was found accompanied by acoustic centralization. The results indicate that the articulatory mechanisms for the speech rate control are associated with the timing relation of contiguous gestures and the temporal-spatial properties of the segments. The articulatory attributes of consonants and individual strategies also affect the segment production for different speech rates.
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2017, Vol. 57 
