2. Exploring variation in phonetic reduction: Linguistic, social, and cognitive factors

Abstract

Substantial empirical research has revealed that temporal and spectral phonetic vowel reduction occurs in "easy" processing contexts relative to "hard" processing contexts, including effects of lexical frequency, lexical neighborhood density, semantic predictability, discourse mention, and speaking style. Theoretical accounts of this phonetic reduction process include listener-oriented approaches, in which the reduction reflects the talker's balancing the comprehension needs of the listener with production effort constraints, talker-oriented approaches, in which reduction is argued to result entirely from constraints on speech production processes, and evolutionary approaches, in which reduction results directly from long-term interactive communication within a community. Recent research in our laboratory has revealed complex interactions among the linguistic, social, and cognitive factors involved in phonetic vowel reduction processes. These interactions reveal variation in the robustness of phonetic reduction effects across linguistic factors, as well as different patterns of interactions among linguistic, social, and cognitive factors across acoustic domains. These interactions challenge aspects of each of the three existing models of phonetic reduction. We therefore propose that a more complex view of the relationship between processing demands and phonetic vowel reduction processes is necessary to account for these observed patterns of variation.

Myth busted? Challenging what we think we know about charismatic speech

“…For example, Niebuhr (2017) found that such an "overarticulated" way of speaking makes a speaker sound more vain and less composed and sincere. However, without special training or instruction, native speakers are unlikely to attain this overarticulated level of pronunciation, as speech reduction probably belongs to the universal characteristics of spoken language (Clopper and Turnbull, 2018) and comes naturally to speakers through semantic or frequency effects or biomechanical and physiological limitations of the speech production apparatus (Cangemi et al, 2018). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the practical risk of strongly and constantly overarticulating one's presentation is low, except, maybe, for non-native speakers, but this is a question that needs to be addressed in future studies.…”

Do Sound Segments Contribute to Sounding Charismatic? Evidence from a Case Study of Steve Jobs' and Mark Zuckerberg's Vowel Spaces

“…Regarding the leeway for less clear articulations, followup studies on charismatic speech will need to take into account that speech reduction is not per se bad. On the contrary, variation in the degree of speech reduction is to some degree context-determined (Clopper and Turnbull, 11 Ernestus and Smith 13 ) and, on this basis, functional in speech communication. 41 For example, more or less strongly reduced sounds and syllables act as acoustic cues to turn-yielding and turn-holding, indicate lexical-stress positions and expressive meanings like irony, distinguish between given and new information, and help listeners predict the phonemic identity of subsequent sound segments.…”

Speech communication in terms of cognition

“…"Of the changes that a thought formed and expressed with the help of language undergoes, the fact that, having been expressed outside, it ceases to be the property of its creator, but becomes a common property, begins to live an independent life. This circumstance raises the possibility of capitalization of human thought and its history" (Clopper et al, 2018).…”