A cross-language perspective on speech information rate

François Pellegrino (1) , Christophe Coupé (1) , Egidio Marsico (1)

1 DDL - Dynamique Du Langage

This article is a crosslinguistic investigation of the hypothesis that the average information rate conveyed during speech communication results from a trade-off between average information density and speech rate. The study, based on seven languages, shows a negative correlation between density and rate, indicating the existence of several encoding strategies. However, these strategies do not necessarily lead to a constant information rate. These results are further investigated in relation to the notion of syllabic complexity

Mots clés: speech rate; cross-language study; speech communication; information theory; working memory

Domaines: Linguistique

François Pellegrino, Christophe Coupé, Egidio Marsico. A cross-language perspective on speech information rate. Language, 2011, 87 (3), pp.539-558. ⟨hal-01133692⟩