TEMPORAL ORGANIZATION AND RHYTHM IN SWEDISH.

This is a report on a pilot study of speech and pause timing in various modes and speeds of prose reading. We have also performed an analysis of the reading of word lists conforming with the text. The degree of durational reduc-tion in connected speech compared to the isolated words varies with the partic-ular word class and allows an hierarchi-cal ordering of content and function words. Stressed syllables tend to expand more than unstressed syllables in a change from a normal to a distinct read-ing mode. From the overall statistics of the growth of stressed and unstressed syllables with number of phonemes one can predict a major part of the fluctua-tion of speech rate within sentences and between phrases. The prediction error represents the reader's deviation from a neutral unengaged reading. 1