The effect of rhythm unit length on the duration of vowels in Serbian

The paper presents the results of two studies of vowel duration depending on the length of rhythm unit in standard Serbian. The goal of the studies was to find out whether the number of unstressed syllables in one rhythm unit affects the duration of stressed vowels in Serbian. The results of both studies reveal a tendency towards the reduction of the duration of stressed vowels with the expansion of a rhythm unit. The studies were carried out in order to determine the nature of rhythm in Serbian and establish its typology (stress-timed or syllable-timed). The general purpose of the research was to establish whether vocalic length in relation to the rhythm unit length can be applied in speech synthesis to improve the performance of the existing speech synthesizer for the Serbian language