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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1036

Part of Session 179: Mutual intelligibility of closely related languages in a multilingual Europe (Other abstracts in this session)

Slowly or clearly? The impact of syllable deletion and articulation rate in Danish for its intelligibility in Scandinavia

Authors: Schüppert, Anja (1); Gooskens, Charlotte (1); Hilton, Nanna (1); Van Heuven, Vincent (2)
Submitted by: Schüppert, Anja (University of Groningen, Netherlands, The)

The Scandinavian languages Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are closely related and mutually intelligible to a high extent. However, intelligibility rates are far from perfect between speakers of the three languages, and Norwegians' and Swedes' imperfect comprehension of spoken Danish is particularly commented upon in literature and in media.

Hilton, Gooskens and Schüppert (2010) showed that if the number of phonological syllables is analysed, articulation rates in Scandinavian radio news broadcasts are significantly higher in Danish (6.2 syllables per second) than in Swedish (5.4 syll/s) and Norwegian (5.4 syll/s). High articulation rate goes hand in hand with a high number of syllable deletion processes, which makes it difficult to determine whether speaking clearly or speaking slowly is more helpful for these communication situations.

This paper presents results from an experiment designed to answer this question. Fifty sentences were recorded by a native speaker of Danish in three different speed and clarity settings: Clear speech (few syllable deletions) at slow tempo (7.3 phonological syll/s), and unclear, reduced speech (many syllable deletions) at high tempo (4.5 phonological syll/s). The slow and clear recordings were manipulated linearly to a higher speed, and the quick and highly reduced recordings were manipulated linearly to a slower speed. By doing so, two more conditions (quick and clear, and slow and reduced) were obtained.

Sentences from all five conditions were presented in a crossed design to high school pupils in Norway and Sweden, and to Danish pupils as control group. The results indicate to which degrees syllable deletion and articulation rate influence intelligibility of Danish in Norwegian and Swedish listeners and give valuable insights about the difference in native and non-native language processing as well as about didactic strategies for the acquisition of a closely related language.

Reference:

Hilton, Nanna Haug, Anja Schüppert & Charlotte Gooskens. 2011. Syllable reduction and articulation rates in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 34(2), 215–237.