|
The Duration of Speech Pauses in a Multilingual Environment Host Publication: Finds and Results from the Swedish Cyprus Expedition: A Gender Perspective at the Medelhavsmuseet Authors: M. Demol, W. Verhelst and P. Verhoeve Publication Date: Aug. 2007
Abstract: In this paper we present a study of speech pauses at three
different speaking rates, based on the analysis of four hours
of read speech in six European languages. Our results
confirm earlier observations that the logarithmic duration of
the pauses can be well approximated by a bi-Gaussian
distribution. We found this also to be true at slow and fast
speaking rates. Our analysis further shows that, as far as the
long speech pauses are concerned, similar strategies are used
in all languages considered. For speaking slowly, speakers
increase the total amount of pauses and they use a wider
range of pause durations. Overall, there appeared to be no
striking change in the average, nor in the variance of the
distribution of the pause durations. For speaking rapidly,
speakers decrease the amount of pauses used and they refrain
from using the longest pauses that occur in their normal
speech. Overall, this results in a lower average and a smaller
variance of the pause durations.
|
