Spaniards articulate faster than Mexicans: temporal patterns in two varieties of Spanish
Résumé
We analyse articulation rate and speech rate, number and duration of pauses for 22 speakers of two Spanish regional varieties (Madrilenian vs Mexican) in three different tasks (read speech, picture description and interview). Our results show that speakers from Madrid have higher articulation rate and speech rate than speakers from Mexico, but that such differences are mainly observed in spontaneous speech (picture description). Instead, the number and duration of pauses were not significantly affected by the provenance of speakers. Some methodological issues are discussed in order to make legitimate inferences from this exploratory study.