Function words of lexical bundles: The relation of frequency and reduction

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Vol. 125; no. 4_Supplement; p. 2656
• Main Authors: Lemke, Shannon F., Tremblay, Antoine, Tucker, Benjamin V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-04-2009
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4784172

Studies of spontaneous speech have shown frequency effects on the amount of reduction produced by speakers, demonstrating that predictability facilitates production of a target word [Shi et al. (2005); Jurafsky et al. (2001); Bell et al. (2003)]. This paper investigates the amount of reduction produced in laboratory recorded speech and considers the effect of frequency on the duration of function words in four-word sequences. It is also found that the influence of frequency has an effect on holistically storing these bundles. An interaction between word position and the third-order transitional probability (ABC → D) has been established, indicating that greater third-order transitional probabilities predict shorter function word durations in the first and second positions of a bundle, and, therefore, involve more durational reduction. The current research shows that, just as frequency affects reduction in spontaneous speech, there is an effect in laboratory produced speech as well. These findings indicate that multiword sequences are stored as lexical units.