The perception of intended speech rate in English, French, and German by French speakers

Abstract

Speakers are able to produce speech at different intended rates when prompted to do so. The question addressed in the present research is to what degree different intended rate categories are perceptually relevant when objective measures of speech rate (e.g. syllables/second) are variable and to what degree listeners are able to identify intended speech rates in languages other than their native language. Initial results from an experiment with French listeners rating speech rates in French, German, and English show that, despite varying objective speech rates, listeners are well able to identify intended speech rate across different languages.