ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1995
ISCA Archive Eurospeech 1995

A simple method of predicting the duration of syllables

Andrew P. Breen

The accurate specification and prediction of segmental durations in speech has attracted a large number of research publications over the years. Such publications may be divided into two types, those which attempt to catalogue the various statistical properties of durations [1] or describe observable duration trends in speech [2], and those which explicitly attempt to predict the duration of segments [3] [4] [5]. In recent years, many papers attempting to understand the reasoning behind particular segment durations have included language structure in their descriptions [2]. The causes of variation in the duration of a segment are now seen as a consequence of higher linguistic structure rather than just close proximity contextual effects. This drive to non-linear phonological descriptions has occurred in part due to a lack of success in improving upon the traditional context sensitive segment duration rules as advocated most notably by Klatt [6].