Do speakers converge rhythmically? A study on segmental timing properties of Grison and Zurich German before and after dialogical interactions

This paper reports on the results of a research investigating whether rhythmic features, in terms segmental timing properties, are object speaker’s adjustments after exposure to conversational partner. In context dialects contact, this is crucial understand attributes may bring about language variation and change. human-machine interactions, can benefit design spoken dialogues systems achieve human-likeness. To study accommodation, we selected corpus pre- post-dialogue recordings, performed by 18 speakers Grison Zurich German (henceforth GRG ZHG), two Swiss characterised noticeable supra-segmental differences. quantify convergence, designed three measures based differences between dialects. We compared Euclidean distances ZHG pair before interactions. Results reveal that dyads members do not significantly shift production features dialogues. Neither linguistic nor social factors account for observed accommodation pattern. Cross-dialectal differences, captured ratio measures, be either robust against influence interlocutors’ acoustic behaviour or too subtle perceived retained