Shortening Tendency for Syllable Duration in Brazilian Portuguese Utterances. Issue 2 (3rd April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rothe-Neves, Rui; Bernardo, Bárbara Marques; Espesser, Robert
• Is Part Of: Journal of quantitative linguistics. Volume 25:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 156
• Page End: 167
• Publication Date: 2018-04-03
• Subjects: Linguistics -- Statistical methods -- Periodicals; 410.151
• DOI: 10.1080/09296174.2017.1360172
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0929-6174

Abstract

Abstract: We investigated whether the mean duration of syllables in utterances of different length in Brazilian Portuguese conform to Menzerath–Altmann's law. Furthermore, by analysing the same spoken material of twenty recorded speakers, we tested for individual differences in the parameters used to formalise the law. The log-transform of the syllable duration was the dependent variable in a linear mixed model with the log-transform of the number of syllables in the utterance as a predictor. Adding a random intercept accounted for the variability across the speakers, but a random slope by speaker did not improve the model. We conclude that Menzerath–Altmann's law fits our data well, but the decreasing tendency is not different from speaker to speaker.