PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The thesis tackles the controversy of the rhythmic type of Polish. In the first chapter, the concepts of timing, duration, meter and rhythm are defined. The rationale for not using “rhythm metrics“ to answer the main research question is provided in chapter two. Their robustness, inability to model hierarchical structures and the lack of grounding in relevant perception and production processes are discussed. A coupled oscillator model (COM) (O'Dell and Nieminen, 2009) and the discipline of coordination dynamics are introduced in the third chapter. Past results on rhythm modeling using linear regression are portrayed and linked to the COM, as demonstrated in (O'Dell and Nieminen 2009), namely: relative coupling strength expresses the coordination between the phonetic syllable level and the rhythmic prominence, as derived from inter-level timing phenomena. The model is implemented using spontaneous speech data from Polish dialogues. The results suggest that as speech rate increases, the syllabic oscillator gains influence over the rhythmic prominence oscillator in Polish. In the final chapter, the “voicing effect” and the “geminate effect” on preceding vowel duration are analysed. The hypothesis of a duration balancing effect exerted by the syllabic oscillator on the constituent segments in these contexts is tested. The results suggests that the hypothesis is weakly supported. An articulatory effort-based explanation is suggested instead.