Universität zu Köln

Seifart, Frank ORCID: 0000-0001-9909-2088, Strunk, Jan ORCID: 0000-0001-8546-1778, Danielsen, Swintha, Hartmann, Iren, Pakendorf, Brigitte, Wichmann, Soren, Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena ORCID: 0000-0003-0138-4635, de Jong, Nivja H. and Bickel, Balthasar (2018). Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 115 (22). S. 5720 - 5726. WASHINGTON: NATL ACAD SCIENCES. ISSN 0027-8424

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Abstract

By force of nature, every bit of spoken language is produced at a particular speed. However, this speed is not constant-speakers regularly speed up and slow down. Variation in speech rate is influenced by a complex combination of factors, including the frequency and predictability of words, their information status, and their position within an utterance. Here, we use speech rate as an index of word-planning effort and focus on the time window during which speakers prepare the production of words from the two major lexical classes, nouns and verbs. We show that, when naturalistic speech is sampled from languages all over the world, there is a robust cross-linguistic tendency for slower speech before nouns compared with verbs, both in terms of slower articulation and more pauses. We attribute this slowdown effect to the increased amount of planning that nouns require compared with verbs. Unlike verbs, nouns can typically only be used when they represent new or unexpected information; otherwise, they have to be replaced by pronouns or be omitted. These conditions on noun use appear to outweigh potential advantages stemming from differences in internal complexity between nouns and verbs. Our findings suggest that, beneath the staggering diversity of grammatical structures and cultural settings, there are robust universals of language processing that are intimately tied to how speakers manage referential information when they communicate with one another.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Seifart, Frank UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-9909-2088 UNSPECIFIED Strunk, Jan UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0001-8546-1778 UNSPECIFIED Danielsen, Swintha UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Hartmann, Iren UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Pakendorf, Brigitte UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Wichmann, Soren UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena UNSPECIFIED orcid.org/0000-0003-0138-4635 UNSPECIFIED de Jong, Nivja H. UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED Bickel, Balthasar UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-185943
DOI:	10.1073/pnas.1800708115
Journal or Publication Title:	Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.
Volume:	115
Number:	22
Page Range:	S. 5720 - 5726
Date:	2018
Publisher:	NATL ACAD SCIENCES
Place of Publication:	WASHINGTON
ISSN:	0027-8424
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Unspecified
Subjects:	no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language TURN-TAKING; SYNTACTIC INFORMATION; WORD DURATIONS; PREDICTABILITY; REDUNDANCY; HOMOPHONES; FREQUENCY; PAUSES; BRAIN Multiple languages Multidisciplinary Sciences Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/18594