Kõnetempo ja - soravuse varieerumine eesti keeles
Variation of speech rate and fluency in Estonian

Summary/Abstract: Speech varies from person to person, and much of how talkative someone is or how fast they speak depends on their personal characteristics. However, along with individual variability, sociodemographic patterns have also been found, for example, that the speech rate slows down with age, but also that women speak slower, clearer and more vividly than men. In the article we look at how the speech rate changes depending on age, gender and the interlocutor in a spontaneous communication situation based on the two Estonian speech corpora, Teen Speak in Estonia and the Phonetic Corpus of Estonian Spontaneous Speech. In order to account for the effect of the speaking situation, we compare the spontaneous data of the adult speakers with the read speech data from the Estonian Northwind and tSun corpora. Since speech rate has been associated with expressiveness, we also look at the fluency of speakers by counting the occurrences of segmental lengthening, restarts, and word repetitions. The results show that the speech rate in spontaneous speech is significantly faster and age-related differences are smaller compared to read speech. In spontaneous interaction the speaker’s speech rate is the most influenced by the speech rate of the interlocutor. Speech fluency was not correlated with speech rate. Teenagers become more fluent with age, but adults showed no change in fluency.

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