Temporal rate change of dialogue speech in prosodic units as compared to read speech

摘要

A comparative study of speech rate was conducted between dialogue speech and read speech of Japanese. Based on a model of fundamental frequency contour generation, four prosodic units, prosodic sentence, clause, phrase and word, are defined. Speech rate was analyzed with respect to these units, especially to prosodic phrases. In order to suppress various factors affecting speech rate, and to clarify features of dialogue speech, mora reduction rate of dialogue speech as compared to its read speech counterpart was defined and was used for the analysis. Through the analysis of speech samples recorded during simulated dialogues, it was found that, in a prosodic phrase, dialogue speech rate starts with a value slightly larger than that of read speech. Then, it gradually increases and after passing through the middle of the phrase, decreases. This result was also supported through a linear analysis and a hearing test of synthetic speech.