Spontaneous segmentation in normal and in time-compressed speech

An experiment is reported in which subjects heard recorded speech passages at normal speaking rates and at various degrees of time compression, with instructions to interrupt the speech input for intermediate report by stopping the tape at points of their choosing. An analysis of subjects’ points of interruption as a function of speech rate eliminated temporal duration and number of words per segment as primary determiners of segmentation strategy. Formal linguistic constituents at all speech rates served as a good, but not perfect, predictor of segmentation boundaries. The results are interpreted in the light of on-line interactive and augmented transition network (ATN) models of speech perception.