Speech rate plays marginal role in processes of connected speech

The study seeks to establish the frequency of occurrence for processes of connected speech and to examine the role of rate, hypothesizing that high rate fosters processes. Auditory and acoustic analysis was performed on 4.5 hs of speech of 9 speakers of Lancashire from the Phonologie de l’Anglais Contemporain corpus (PAC). As for the first aim, the following ranking emerges: /d/ deletion (34%), /t/ deletion (31%), /h/ deletion (20 %), fricativization (9%), yod coalescence (3%) and assimilation of place (2%). This hierarchy of occurrence can be explained with the two factors: lexical frequency and interspeaker variability. A surprising finding is that rate effects, with exception of /t/ deletion, were not observed for individual processes or across the gradient/categorical division, pointing to a less significant role of tempo than it is assumed. Instead, it is suggested that connected speech processes are phonological, not phonetic.