Syllable deletion in contemporary Danish

Danish has been described as a language exhibiting particularly many reduction phenomena, a development which might lead to impaired intelligibility. This paper quantifies syllable deletion and articulation rate in spoken Danish and investigates their effects on the intelligibility of Danish to native speakers. In a crossed-design, sentences in four experimental conditions were presented to native speakers of Danish in a translation task. The conditions were (i) quick and accurate (few syllable deletions) speech, (ii) quick and inaccurate speech, (iii) slow and accurate speech, and (iv) slow and inaccurate speech. The results reveal that slow and accurate speech is most intelligible, while quick and accurate speech is least intelligible to native speakers. The findings are discussed in the light of auditory and articulatory theoretical frameworks of speech production