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A cross-language perspective on speech information rate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

François Pellegrino ,
Christophe Coupe  and
Egidio Marsico
François Pellegrino*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Université de Lyon and CNRS
Christophe Coupe*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Université de Lyon and CNRS
Egidio Marsico*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, Université de Lyon and CNRS
*
DDL - ISH 14 Avenue Berthelot 69363 Lyon Cedex 7 France, [Francois.Pellegrino@univ-lyon2.fr]
DDL - ISH 14 Avenue Berthelot 69363 Lyon Cedex 7 France, [Francois.Pellegrino@univ-lyon2.fr]
DDL - ISH 14 Avenue Berthelot 69363 Lyon Cedex 7 France, [Francois.Pellegrino@univ-lyon2.fr]
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Abstract

This article is a crosslinguistic investigation of the hypothesis that the average information rate conveyed during speech communication results from a trade-off between average information density and speech rate. The study, based on seven languages, shows a negative correlation between density and rate, indicating the existence of several encoding strategies. However, these strategies do not necessarily lead to a constant information rate. These results are further investigated in relation to the notion of syllabic complexity.

Keywords

speech communicationinformation theoryworking memoryspeech ratecross-language study

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 87 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 539 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Linguistic Society of America

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