Lack of effects of gender on the reading rate of long texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.32924Keywords:
gender in language, sex in language, reading rate, reading tempoAbstract
Among various linguistic and extralinguistic factors which may affect speech tempo, the gender of the speaker has received considerable attention. In a number of publications it has been reported that women tend to read at a slower rate than men. However, other studies cast doubt on these findings and the issue needs further investigation. This paper attempts to compare the reading rate of male and female speakers of English on the basis of selected chapters from audiobooks. The recordings analysed are considerably longer than the samples used in previous research. The rate of speech has been measured using phonemes per second, syllables per second and words per second. The results consistently indicate that gender does not affect reading tempo. They are directly applicable in text-to-speech (TTS) software development and may be useful in other disciplines, such as forensic linguistics, clinical linguistics or education.
References
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Byrd, D. (1992) Preliminary results on speaker-dependent variation in the TIMIT database. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92(1): 593–596. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.404271.
Byrd, D. (1994) Relations of sex and dialect to reduction. Speech Communication 15(1–2): 39–54. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6393(94)90039-6.
Byrd, D. and Saltzman, E. (1998) Intragestural dynamics of multiple phrasal boundaries. Journal of Phonetics 26: 173–199. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1998.0071.
Crystal, T. H., and House, A. S. (1990) Articulation rate and the duration of syllables and stress groups in connected speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 88(1): 101–112. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.399955.
De Rooij, J. J. (1979) Speech Punctuation: An Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Some Aspects of Speech Prosody in Dutch. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht.
Den Os, E. (1985) Perception of speech rate: A scaling experiment. Progress Report Institute of Phonetics, University of Utrecht 10: 35–43.
Elyan, O. H. (1978) Sex-differences in speech style. Women Speaking 4: 4–8.
Ericsdotter, C., and Ericsson, A. M. (2009) Gender differences in vowel duration in read Swedish: Preliminary results. Working Papers of the Department of Linguistics, Lund University 49: 34–37.
Fichtelius, A., Johansson, I. and Nordin, K. (1980) Three investigations of sex-associated speech variation in day school. Women’s Studies International Quarterly 3(2): 219–225. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-0685(80)92218-6.
Fitzsimons, M., Sheahan, N. and Staunton, H. (2001) Gender and the integration of acoustic dimensions of prosody: Implications for clinical studies. Brain and Language 78(1): 94–108. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.2000.2448.
Gimson, A. C., and Cruttenden, A. (2001) Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1968) Psycholinguistics: Experiments in Spontaneous Speech. London: Academic Press.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1972) Pauses, clauses, sentences. Language and Speech 15(2): 103–113. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/002383097201500201.
Halpern, H., and Goldfarb, R. M. (2013) Language and Motor Speech Disorders in Adults. Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Handke, J. (1995) The Structure of the Lexicon: Human versus Machine Vol. 5. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110907865.
Harley, T. A. (1995) The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. Hove, UK: Erlbaum and Taylor & Francis.
Heffner, R.-M. S. (1969) General Phonetics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Herrmann, F., Cunningham, S. P. and Whiteside, S. P. (2014) Speaker sex effects on temporal and spectro-temporal measures of speech. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 44(1): 59–74. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100313000315.
Hillenbrand, J., Getty, L. A., Clark, M. J. and Wheeler, K. (1995) Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(5): 3099–3111. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.411872.
Jacewicz, E., Fox, R. A., O’Neill, C., and Salmons, J. (2009) Articulation rate across dialect, age, and gender. Language Variation and Change 21(2): 233–256. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394509990093.
Johnson, K., and Martin, J. (2000) Acoustic vowel reduction in Creek: Effects of distinctive length and position in the word. Phonetica 58(1–2): 81–102.
Jones, D. (1991) An Outline of English Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klatt, D. H. (1976) Linguistic uses of segmental duration in English: Acoustic and perceptual evidence. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 59(5): 1208–1221. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.380986.
Klatt, D. H., and Klatt, L. C. (1990) Analysis, synthesis, and perception of voice quality variations among female and male talkers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 87(2): 820–857. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.398894.
Koopmans-Van Beinum, F. J. (1980) Vowel Contrast Reduction: An Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Dutch Vowels in Various Speech Conditions. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Marguiles, M. K. (1979) Male-female differences in speaker intelligibility; normal and hearing-impaired listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 65(S99). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2017546.
Nakatani, L. H., O’Connor, K. D. and Aston, C. H. (1981) Prosodic aspects of American English speech rhythm. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 69(S82). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.386084.
Nooteboom, S. G. (1972) Production and Perception of Vowel Duration: A Study of the Durational Properties of Vowels in Dutch. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Utrecht.
Oller, D. K. (1973) The effect of position in utterance on speech segment duration in English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54(5): 1235–1247. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1914393.
Picheny, M. A., Durlach, N. I., and Braida, L. D. (1985) Speaking clearly for the hard of hearing I: Intelligibility differences between clear and conversational speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 28(1): 96–103. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.2801.96.
Plag, I. (2003) Word-Formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511841323.
Python Software Foundation (2016) Python Language Reference (Version 3.4.3) [Computer Software].
Quené, H. (2008) Multilevel modeling of between-speaker and within-speaker variation in spontaneous speech tempo. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123(2): 1104–1113. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2821762.
R Development Core Team (2013) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (Version 3.0.3) [Computer Software]. Vienna, Austria.
Ray, G. B., and Zahn, C. J. (1990) Regional speech rates in the United States: A preliminary analysis. Communication Research Reports 7(1): 34–37. Doi: https://doi.org/-10.1080/08824099009359851.
Roach, P. (2010) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rubach, J. (1982) Analysis of Phonological Structures. Warszawa: Pa?stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Schötz, S. (2006) Perception, Analysis and Synthesis of Speaker Age. Lund: Lund University.
Schwab, S., and Avanzi, M. (2015) Regional variation and articulation rate in French. Journal of Phonetics 48: 96–105. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2014.10.009.
Simpson, A. P. (1998) Phonetische Datenbanken des Deutschen in der empirischen Sprachforschung und der phonologischen Theoriebildung (Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung [AIPUK] 33). Kiel: Institut Für Phonetik Und Digitale Sprachverarbeitung Universität Kiel.
Simpson, A. P. (2001) Dynamic consequences of differences in male and female vocal tract dimensions. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109(5): 2153–2164. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1356020.
Simpson, A. P. (2002) Gender-specific articulatory-acoustic relations in vowel sequences. Journal of Phonetics 30(3): 417–435. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2002.0171.
Simpson, A. P., and Ericsdotter, C. (2003) Sex-specific durational differences in English and Swedish. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 1113–1116.
Stolarski, ?. (2004) Proces odbudowy poziomu Formy Cytowanej [Reconstruction of the citation form level]. In P. P. Chruszczewski (ed.) Aspekty wspó?czesnych dyskursów Vol. 1 359–376. Kraków: Krakowskie Towarzystwo Popularyzowania Wiedzy o Komunikacji J?zykowej Tertium.
Thomson, A. J., and Martinet, A. V. (1994) A Practical English Grammar. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Tsao, Y.-C., Weismer, G. and Iqbal, K. (2006) Interspeaker variation in habitual speaking rate: Additional evidence. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(5): 1156–1164. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/083).
Verhoeven, J., De Pauw, G., and Kloots, H. (2004) Speech rate in a pluricentric language: A comparison between Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands. Language and Speech 47(3): 297–308. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309040470030401.
Wassink, A. B. (1999) A Sociophonetic Analysis of Jamaican Vowels. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.
Wells, J. C. (2010) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.
White, L. (2002) English Speech Timing: A Domain and Locus Approach. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Whiteside, S. P. (1996) Temporal-based acoustic-phonetic patterns in read speech: Some evidence for speaker sex differences. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 26(1): 23–40. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300005302.
Yuan, J., Liberman, M. and Cieri, C. (2006) Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation. In INTERSPEECH 541–544.
Boersma, P., and Weenink, D. (2014) Praat, a System for Doing Phonetics by Computer (Version 5.4.01) [Computer Software]. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
Byrd, D. (1992) Preliminary results on speaker-dependent variation in the TIMIT database. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92(1): 593–596. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.404271.
Byrd, D. (1994) Relations of sex and dialect to reduction. Speech Communication 15(1–2): 39–54. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6393(94)90039-6.
Byrd, D. and Saltzman, E. (1998) Intragestural dynamics of multiple phrasal boundaries. Journal of Phonetics 26: 173–199. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1998.0071.
Crystal, T. H., and House, A. S. (1990) Articulation rate and the duration of syllables and stress groups in connected speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 88(1): 101–112. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.399955.
De Rooij, J. J. (1979) Speech Punctuation: An Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Some Aspects of Speech Prosody in Dutch. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht.
Den Os, E. (1985) Perception of speech rate: A scaling experiment. Progress Report Institute of Phonetics, University of Utrecht 10: 35–43.
Elyan, O. H. (1978) Sex-differences in speech style. Women Speaking 4: 4–8.
Ericsdotter, C., and Ericsson, A. M. (2009) Gender differences in vowel duration in read Swedish: Preliminary results. Working Papers of the Department of Linguistics, Lund University 49: 34–37.
Fichtelius, A., Johansson, I. and Nordin, K. (1980) Three investigations of sex-associated speech variation in day school. Women’s Studies International Quarterly 3(2): 219–225. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0148-0685(80)92218-6.
Fitzsimons, M., Sheahan, N. and Staunton, H. (2001) Gender and the integration of acoustic dimensions of prosody: Implications for clinical studies. Brain and Language 78(1): 94–108. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.2000.2448.
Gimson, A. C., and Cruttenden, A. (2001) Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1968) Psycholinguistics: Experiments in Spontaneous Speech. London: Academic Press.
Goldman-Eisler, F. (1972) Pauses, clauses, sentences. Language and Speech 15(2): 103–113. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/002383097201500201.
Halpern, H., and Goldfarb, R. M. (2013) Language and Motor Speech Disorders in Adults. Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Handke, J. (1995) The Structure of the Lexicon: Human versus Machine Vol. 5. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110907865.
Harley, T. A. (1995) The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. Hove, UK: Erlbaum and Taylor & Francis.
Heffner, R.-M. S. (1969) General Phonetics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Herrmann, F., Cunningham, S. P. and Whiteside, S. P. (2014) Speaker sex effects on temporal and spectro-temporal measures of speech. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 44(1): 59–74. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100313000315.
Hillenbrand, J., Getty, L. A., Clark, M. J. and Wheeler, K. (1995) Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(5): 3099–3111. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.411872.
Jacewicz, E., Fox, R. A., O’Neill, C., and Salmons, J. (2009) Articulation rate across dialect, age, and gender. Language Variation and Change 21(2): 233–256. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394509990093.
Johnson, K., and Martin, J. (2000) Acoustic vowel reduction in Creek: Effects of distinctive length and position in the word. Phonetica 58(1–2): 81–102.
Jones, D. (1991) An Outline of English Phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Klatt, D. H. (1976) Linguistic uses of segmental duration in English: Acoustic and perceptual evidence. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 59(5): 1208–1221. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.380986.
Klatt, D. H., and Klatt, L. C. (1990) Analysis, synthesis, and perception of voice quality variations among female and male talkers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 87(2): 820–857. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.398894.
Koopmans-Van Beinum, F. J. (1980) Vowel Contrast Reduction: An Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Dutch Vowels in Various Speech Conditions. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Marguiles, M. K. (1979) Male-female differences in speaker intelligibility; normal and hearing-impaired listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 65(S99). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2017546.
Nakatani, L. H., O’Connor, K. D. and Aston, C. H. (1981) Prosodic aspects of American English speech rhythm. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 69(S82). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.386084.
Nooteboom, S. G. (1972) Production and Perception of Vowel Duration: A Study of the Durational Properties of Vowels in Dutch. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Utrecht.
Oller, D. K. (1973) The effect of position in utterance on speech segment duration in English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54(5): 1235–1247. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1914393.
Picheny, M. A., Durlach, N. I., and Braida, L. D. (1985) Speaking clearly for the hard of hearing I: Intelligibility differences between clear and conversational speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 28(1): 96–103. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.2801.96.
Plag, I. (2003) Word-Formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511841323.
Python Software Foundation (2016) Python Language Reference (Version 3.4.3) [Computer Software].
Quené, H. (2008) Multilevel modeling of between-speaker and within-speaker variation in spontaneous speech tempo. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123(2): 1104–1113. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2821762.
R Development Core Team (2013) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (Version 3.0.3) [Computer Software]. Vienna, Austria.
Ray, G. B., and Zahn, C. J. (1990) Regional speech rates in the United States: A preliminary analysis. Communication Research Reports 7(1): 34–37. Doi: https://doi.org/-10.1080/08824099009359851.
Roach, P. (2010) English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rubach, J. (1982) Analysis of Phonological Structures. Warszawa: Pa?stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Schötz, S. (2006) Perception, Analysis and Synthesis of Speaker Age. Lund: Lund University.
Schwab, S., and Avanzi, M. (2015) Regional variation and articulation rate in French. Journal of Phonetics 48: 96–105. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2014.10.009.
Simpson, A. P. (1998) Phonetische Datenbanken des Deutschen in der empirischen Sprachforschung und der phonologischen Theoriebildung (Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung [AIPUK] 33). Kiel: Institut Für Phonetik Und Digitale Sprachverarbeitung Universität Kiel.
Simpson, A. P. (2001) Dynamic consequences of differences in male and female vocal tract dimensions. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109(5): 2153–2164. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1356020.
Simpson, A. P. (2002) Gender-specific articulatory-acoustic relations in vowel sequences. Journal of Phonetics 30(3): 417–435. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2002.0171.
Simpson, A. P., and Ericsdotter, C. (2003) Sex-specific durational differences in English and Swedish. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 1113–1116.
Stolarski, ?. (2004) Proces odbudowy poziomu Formy Cytowanej [Reconstruction of the citation form level]. In P. P. Chruszczewski (ed.) Aspekty wspó?czesnych dyskursów Vol. 1 359–376. Kraków: Krakowskie Towarzystwo Popularyzowania Wiedzy o Komunikacji J?zykowej Tertium.
Thomson, A. J., and Martinet, A. V. (1994) A Practical English Grammar. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Tsao, Y.-C., Weismer, G. and Iqbal, K. (2006) Interspeaker variation in habitual speaking rate: Additional evidence. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(5): 1156–1164. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/083).
Verhoeven, J., De Pauw, G., and Kloots, H. (2004) Speech rate in a pluricentric language: A comparison between Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands. Language and Speech 47(3): 297–308. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309040470030401.
Wassink, A. B. (1999) A Sociophonetic Analysis of Jamaican Vowels. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.
Wells, J. C. (2010) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.
White, L. (2002) English Speech Timing: A Domain and Locus Approach. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
Whiteside, S. P. (1996) Temporal-based acoustic-phonetic patterns in read speech: Some evidence for speaker sex differences. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 26(1): 23–40. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300005302.
Yuan, J., Liberman, M. and Cieri, C. (2006) Towards an integrated understanding of speaking rate in conversation. In INTERSPEECH 541–544.
Published
2019-05-02
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Stolarski, Łukasz. (2019). Lack of effects of gender on the reading rate of long texts. Sociolinguistic Studies, 12(3-4), 461-479. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.32924
