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5.Results

5.1.Auditive analysis

Before we can present an auditive analysis of the data, we have to find out whether or not the quiz design was successful. The results show that the quiz indeed triggers faster speech by all subjects. Figure 2 shows their acceleration factors. Subjects 1, 2 and 4 turned out to be the best accelerating speakers, whereas subjects 3, 5 and 6 showed less difference in duration between andante and allegro realizations. The mean acceleration factor for the three fast speakers is 1.31, whereas the mean acceleration factor for the three slow speakers is 1.13.
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igure 2. Acceleration factors of all subjects
Figure 3 shows the mean durations of the items at both speech rates. It shows that the best accelerating speakers are also the fastest speakers. We expect to find more restructured patterns for these speakers, mainly subjects 1 and 4, in comparison to the slower speakers, such as subjects 3 and 6.
F
igure 3. Mean word durations
Figure 4 shows that most subjects prefer patterns in which from a phonological point of view markedness constraints dominate the correspondence constraints at both rates for right and left shift data, but not for beat reduction data. There are slightly more restructured patterns in allegro tempo, although the differences are quite small.





Figure 4. All subjects: Number of restructured items per type
When we take the results of two fast subjects apart, subjects 1 and 4, we observe a stronger preference for restructuring in allegro speech and no restructuring in andante speech, as shown in Figure 5. In other words, the fast subjects display both a greater difference in word durations in andante and allegro speech, and more variability in their speech patterns due to tempo than the slow subjects do.

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igure 5. Fast subjects: Number of restructured items per type
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bviously, the preference for restructuring the rhythmic pattern in allegro speech is not an absolute preference. Sometimes restructuring does not take place in allegro speech, but on the other hand restructured patterns also show up in andante speech._⁴⁶ Some items were realized with the same rhythmic pattern irrespective of the tempo. Therefore, we also looked at the word pairs with a different rhythmic pattern in both tempos for each subject. We observe that the relatively fast speakers p1, p2 and p4, show the expected pattern according to our hypothesis, which means that they show a restructured pattern in allegro tempo, as shown in Figure 6 for the right shifts.
Figure 6. Right Shifts: Expected combinations
Two of the relatively slow speakers, p3 and p6, show one counterexample each, where the subject prefers the restructured patterns in andante tempo. The other slow speaker, P5, displays no different patterns in andante and allegro at all. Clearly, we have two different groups of speakers and this observation strengthens our claim that restructuring relates to speech rate.

Some items, such as hobbywerkruimte (Type 1) 'hobby room', never show a stress shift and other items, such as viriliteit (Type 2) ‘virility’, prefer the shifted pattern in both tempos for all subjects. Possibly, the syllable structure plays an important role; open syllables seem to lose stress more easily than closed ones.