Subject: Re: Statistics for word rate in natural speech From: Joseph Toscano <joseph.toscano@xxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 13:46:09 +0000 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>As one other piece of information, Miller, Grosjean, & Lomanto (1984), provide statistics on speaking rate (in syllables/second) from a series of interviews with 30 talkers. They give a mean rate of 4.97 syllables/sec, which is similar to the estimates obtained in previous work that they review in the paper. They also found considerable variation between and within talkers. The rate of 4.97 syl/sec works out to a syllable duration of ~200 ms. Most of the individual talkers varied their syllable durations over a 100 ms range during the course of the interview (i.e. 100-300 ms), resulting in a speaking rate range of 3-10 syllables/second. Full reference: Miller JL, Grojean F, Lomanto C (1984). Articulation rate and its variability in spontaneous speech: A reanalysis and some implications. Phonetica, 41, 215-225. Joe On 6/20/16, 12:48 AM, "AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception on behalf of Kevin Austin" <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx on behalf of kevin.austin@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >Thank you. > >I’m not a linguist or psycholinguist, so I write only from direct experience. > >My reading is that the question is not very 'well-formed', and therefore the answers do not respond to the question. > >The question was about ‘words’ [whatever they may happen to be], and the answers start with the idea of syllable, and Jont’s answer seems to be in ‘base phonemic elements’. For example, the two words, “Iâ€, and “stoppedâ€, count two words, each of one syllable, but ‘stopped’ is ccvcc [if the /p/ is pronounced]. > >10ms [ie 100Hz] seems to be a very small duration, and may only apply to a very limited number of phonemes. I had learned that the shortest time that was reliable for the [sequential] discrimination of auditory events was in the range of 25 to 40 ms — 40 to 25Hz. A ~16Hz limit works out to be around 60-70ms. > >But sixteen “what’sâ€? Try the test. Record sixteen one syllable words, with cv or vc forms: be, am, so, it, two, aught, tea, ear, tie . . etc Most of these are two phonemes, or three if a diphthong is considered a grouped vowel, as in the word ‘tie’. Say them quickly. Edit them into a sequence with no gaps, and shorten the sequence to be 1,000ms. Is it possible to do sequential segmentation? leaving aside the articulatory problems. > >Record: “I spied the top pieâ€, and “North-eastern Carolinian national seashoreâ€. Both are ‘five words’. For interest, edit out the words: ‘top', ‘pie', ‘Carolinian', and ‘national’. Tricks such as producing the /d/ in spied as being the stopped diphthong /ai/, and the contracting of the /p/, and the /n/, likely increase the rate of delivery in natural speech, but most likely mostly in informal contexts. > >“What was the question again?†cv ccvc cv ccvccvcvcvc > > >Kevin > > > > >> On 2016, Jun 19, at 8:03 AM, Jont Allen <jontalle@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> All, >> >> A comment that I hope is helpful. >> >> In our speech work we have learned, from extensive analysis, that the fastest temporal resolution that speech is processed at, by the auditory system, is about 10 [ms]. >> That means that the natural temporal units for talking about speech (or singing) is in centiseconds [cs]. For example, the plosive burst of say /ka/ is about 1-2 [cs]. >> I have not found very many examples of less than 1 [cs], as the perception deteriorates quickly when you go below (shorter that) 1 [cs]. >> >> Based the numbers below for rapper Big Boi, 379 syllables/m is about 16 [cs] >> 1000*60/379 = 15.8 >> >> This seems like a nice way to quantify this rate. Its close to the perceptual lower limit of 1 [sc]. A full syllable (CV, VC) of 16 seems pretty short. >> >> Jont Allen >> >> On 06/18/2016 11:39 PM, Arun Chandra wrote: >>> In Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro", Bartolo sings his revenge aria at about quarter == 112mm, which means the syllables are going by in triplets at about 336 per minute. >>> >>> in Rossini's "Barber of Seville", the character Bartolo (the same character, again) sings his accusing aria to Rosina (his ward) at about quarter == 116mm, which means the sixteenth note syllables are going by at about 464 per minute. >>> >>> the "Modern Major General's Song" by Gilbert and Sullivan goes by at about 184mm, so it's syllables are about 368 per minute. >>> >>> arun >>> >>> >>> >>> On 6/18/16 4:07 AM, Huron, David wrote: >>>> We have a wide tolerance for speech with "normal" paces ranging between 170 and 260 syllables per minute. >>>> (Yuan, Liberman & Cieri, 2006; Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation. INTER SPEECH conference Proc.) >>>> >>>> Music exhibits an enormous range of lyrical pace. Judy Garland's rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" clocks in at a leisurely 64 syllables per minute. By contrast, in "Ms. Jackson" by OutKast, rapper Big Boi reaches an extraordinary 379 syllables per minute. >>>> >>>> -David Huron with Nat Condit-Schultz >>>> >>>> ________________________________________ >>>> From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx on behalf of Bruno L. Giordano [brungio@xxxxxxxx >>>> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 8:32 AM >>>> To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxx >>>> Subject: Statistics for word rate in natural speech >>>> >>>> Hello, >>>> >>>> I am looking for published statistics on average word rate in natural speech (words/minute). >>>> >>>> Is there some golden standard reference for this? >>>> >>>> Thank you! >>>> >>>> Bruno >>>> >>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >>>> Bruno L. Giordano, PhD >>>> Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology >>>> 58 Hillhead Street, University of Glasgow >>>> Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland >>>> T +44 (0) 141 330 5484 >>>> Www: http://www.brunolgiordano.net >>>> Email charter: http://www.emailcharter.org/ >>>>