A Linguistic Rhythm Observed from the Respiratory Muscle Movements and Speech Waveforms by English, Japanese and Chinese L1 and L2 - The Recitation of a Story

To investigate the relationships between respiratory control and the speech signal in the recitation of a story in English, Japanese, and Chinese, I compared and analysed the respiratory muscle movements utilising Strangage and simultaneously recorded speech signal. The subjects were English, Japanese and Chinese speakers. The results showed that (1) the Chinese showed no significant difference in durations in reading a story regardless of the language, but the converse was true for the English and Japanese, (2) English speakers may have a tendency to have chest and stomach movements accord with each other regardless of the language and the peaks of the movements linked to the speech waveforms, all being related to the boundary at the sentential or phrasal level by pausing, (3) Chinese speakers explicitly have chest and stomach movements which accord with each other regardless of the language, but the peaks of the movements cannot be linked to speech waveforms, (4) Japanese speakers may have a tendency to have the chest and stomach movements accord with speech waveforms at the phrasal level, but often chest and stomach movements do not accord.