A Review of Timing Factors in Speech

Timing in speech is determined by many factors. In this paper, we introduce and discuss some factors that have generally been regarded as important in speech timing. They include stress, syllable structure, consonant insertion or deletion, tempo, lengthening at clause, phrase and word boundaries, preconsonantal vowel shortening, and compensation between segments or within phonological units (e.g., word, foot), compression due to the increase of syllables in word or foot level, etc. and each of them may playa crucial role in the structuring of speech timing in a language. But some of these timing factors must interact with each other rather than be independent and the effects of each factor on speech timing will vary from language to language. On the other hand, there could well be many other factors unknown so far. Finding out and investigating new timing factors and reinterpreting the already-known timing factors should enhance our understanding of timing structures in a given language or languages.