Speech and Communicative Timing Across Languages and Linguistic Contexts

Speech timing between conversation partners is highly complex; nonetheless, native speakers of a given language have a strong sense of proper timing when they speak and converse. For example, a 'delay' during a conversation over Skype or Zoom can disrupt the flow of conversation considerably, even if no words are actually lost during the connection. This project investigates how speakers know when to plan their utterances during conversation, and how communicative timing varies across different languages and cultures. The research also examines how individuals time gestures of the hands and head along with their speech. The project's potential impacts include improving the naturalness of human-machine interactions, boosting the effectiveness in foreign language training, and therapeutic interventions for those with speech and language disorders. Recent research suggests that conversational timing patterns vary systematically across speakers of different languages. This project seeks to develop an explanatory model for such findings by investigating interactional timing patterns among populations of varying linguistic and sociolinguistic backgrounds. Using audio and video recordings, speech timing will be examined at the individual level in terms of how speakers align their speech to a metronome, and how they time their own co-speech gestures. The project will also investigate conversational timing between pairs of speakers, exploring relative timing of speech and gestural landmarks between conversation partners. Project findings will be of interest to linguists and speech scientists as they will inform a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural model of speech and co-speech gestural timing. Findings will also be of interest to scientists studying the role of language and related abilities (such as music and rhythmic entrainment) in the broader context of human development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.