From Newsgroup: alt.usage.english


Is it also the case that... the rate of Info-delivery
(bits per Second) is pretty much the same all over?

But NYC folks (and MIT students) talk much faster ???


Tilde <invalide@invalid.invalid> posted:

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-universal-rhythm-global-analysis-reveals.html

Have you ever noticed that a natural conversation
flows like a dancerCopauses, emphases, and turns
arriving just in time? A new study has discovered
that this isn't just intuition; there is a
biological rhythm embedded in our speech.

The work is published in the journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the study, led by Dr. Maya Inbar,
alongside Professors Eitan Grossman and Ayelet N.
Landau, human speech across the world pulses to the
beat of what are called intonation units, short
prosodic phrases that occur at a consistent rate of
one every 1.6 seconds.

The research analyzed over 650 recordings in 48
languages spanning every continent and 27 language
families. Using a novel algorithm, the team was able
to automatically identify intonation units in
spontaneous speech, revealing that regardless of
the language spoken, from English and Russian to
endangered languages in remote regions, people
naturally break their speech into these rhythmic
chunks.

"These findings suggest that the way we pace our
speech isn't just a cultural artifact, it's deeply
rooted in human cognition and biology," says Dr.
Inbar. "We also show that the rhythm of intonation
units is unrelated to faster rhythms in speech,
such as the rhythm of syllables, and thus likely
serves a different cognitive role."
...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2425166122
A universal of speech timing: Intonation units
form low-frequency rhythms

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