A corpora-based study of vowel reduction in two speech styles: A comparison between

English and Polish

1. Introduction

The paper reports the results of a corpora-based study of vowel reduction in English and Polish

across two speech styles, read and fully spontaneous. The study addresses the issue of vowel

reduction which, following the centralization theory (Koopmans-van Beinum 1980), consists in

diminishing the vowel’s distinctiveness, i.e. its quality and quantity. Given the shape of the vocal

tract, the process of vowel reduction modifies a vowel by pulling or dragging it to the most

centralized point of the vowel space. As Carr (2008) notes, “in many languages, unstressed

vowels are often reduced to schwa, which involves no deviation from the neutral position of the

tongue. A word such as personal has reduced vowels in its unstressed syllables, both of them

schwas: [ pʰɜːsənəl], but in the word personality, the syllable with primary stress has a non-

reduced vowel: [ˌpʰɜːsənælɪti]” (Carr 2008: 145-146).

Numerous proposals have been made to identify and explain the factors triggering

reduction. Lindblom (1963), for instance, views vowel reduction as a result of undershoot, or

failure to reach a more peripheral tongue position in the vowel space due to time-related pressure:

“undershoot in the formant frequencies relative to the bull's-eye’ formant pattern” (Lindblom

1963: 1779). Others claim that vowel reduction is a function of stress (Crosswhite 2003; Barnes

2006), whereas Harris (2005) understands vowel reduction as information loss: ”[r]eduction

follows two apparently contradictory routes in vowel space, yielding either centralised values (the

‘centripetal’ pattern) or the corner values a, i, u (the ‘centrifugal’ pattern). What unifies these

vowels is the relative simplicity of their acoustic spectra compared to those of mid peripheral

1
vowels. Spectral complexity can be taken as one measure of the amount of phonetic information

present in a speech signal at a given time. On this basis, centripetal and centrifugal reduction can

both be construed as resulting in a loss of phonetic information” (Harris 2005: 119). Analyzing

vowel reduction in the setting of casual speech, Bybee (2009) claims that “vowels move closer to

the neutral position and schwas grow shorter and shorter until they are simply skipped […] as

changes in the timing of the articulatory gestures” (Bybee 2009: 30). In addition, a vowel

undergoes reduction if it is in a second or subsequent token of a word (Fowler and Housum 1987,

Baker and Bradlow 2009). Regardless of the theoretical stance, typically, lax vowels in

prosodically weak positions are subject to reduction (Cruttenden 2014). In a similar vein,

consonants also exhibit a parallel process of reduction, although on a smaller scale: lenition of

voiceless stops in intervocalic position may serve as an example here (Watson 2006).

The very term reduction deserves additional explanation in the context of vowels as its

effect may be partial (reduction of a lax sound to a more centralized one) or complete (schwa

elision). By the same token, a need arises to draw a distinction between phonetic and

phonological reduction. The former stands for obliteration of lexical distinctions that results from

neutralisation of phonetic contrast between two or more vowels (Crosswhite 2003; Barnes 2006).

It treats vowel reduction as a constituent of the phonological inventory of a language, irrespective

of speaking style or tempo and can be represented by schwas in the dictionary entries. The latter,

by contrast, is a universal, cross-linguistic and naturally occurring process (Farnetani and Busa

1999; Vayra et al. 1999; Nikolaidis 2003; Flemming 2005; Jaworski 2007). According to

Lindblom (1963), phonetic reduction is “an intrinsic propensity of vowels to degeneration to

schwa when they occur in connected speech” (Lindblom 1963: 1781). Phonetic reduction may be

then taken as any approximation of vowels towards schwa vowel that ensues from an increased

speaking rate or decreased articulatory effort, e.g. vowel reduction present in grammatical words.
2
This is the sense in which the term vowel reduction is used in the present paper, as a general

tendency to centralize vowels and an approximation to schwa, rather than its full realization.

The study reported here takes into consideration vowel reduction across speech styles.

Speech style, in turn, may be understood as “the variation that occurs in the speech of a single

speaker in different situational contexts” (Cheshire 1992: 324). The variation, evoked in the

definition, is governed by a number of factors such as audience design (Bell 1984; Bell 2001) or

the amount of attention paid by the speaker (Labov 1994). Thus, a distinction can be made

between formal vs. informal speech style, where the level of attention increases with the level of

formality (Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 1990). Vowel reduction is highly pervasive in informal speech

(Ernestus and Warner 2011); due to a specific design of one of the corpora used in the study (cf.

section 2), however, having a recourse to formal speech for style comparison was not possible.

Instead, the study compares read to fully spontaneous speech style, the former serving as a proxy

for formal style. In fact, a number of languages have been reported to vary across the

read/spontaneous distinction in the vowel space. Much of the published literature on vowel

reduction has found that both duration and formants are reduced (shortened and centralized) to a

greater degree in spontaneous speech than in read speech.

Table 1: Comparison of speech styles across languages (adapted from Spilkova 2014).

study language types of speech material findings

Koopmans- Dutch isolated vowels, canonical word vowel quality contrast decreases in
van Beinum forms, read speech, retold story, more spontaneous productions
Vowel reduction (formants)

(1980) conversational speech

Harmegnies Spanish spontaneous conversational vowel centralization and greater
and Poch- speech vs. laboratory speech (i.e. within-category scatter in
Olivé (1992) word list reading) spontaneous vs. laboratory speech
Laan (1997) Dutch spontaneous speech on prepared - smaller vowel space in both
topic, read speech (read version speaking styles as compared to
of the spontaneous speech vowels produced in isolation
transcript), isolated vowels - more centralized vowel formant
values in spontaneous speech (only
for one speaker)

3
 Bondarko et Russian spontaneous speech (dialogues vs greater variability of formant values
al. (2003) read speech (read version of the for peripheral vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/
spontaneous speech transcript) in spontaneous speech
Moon and English citation forms (i.e. normal less formant displacement due to
Lindblom reading) vs. clear speech context in clear speech
(1994)

With regard to languages examined in the present study, two typologically unrelated

languages were selected: English and Polish. Apart from different rhythmic properties, vowel

inventories differ considerably between Polish and English, in both quality and quantity:

Figure 1: Vowels of Polish (Jassem 2003: 105).

Figure 2: Vowels of British English (Roach 2003: 242).

A comparison of Figures 1 and 2 reveals that all Polish vowels are of equal length and that

Polish, unlike English, has no schwa and the mid area of the vowel space is unpopulated with the

only exception of the /ɨ/ sound. As Sobkowiak puts it, “Polish vowels are never reduced so

4
thoroughly to a mid-central quality of schwa” (Sobkowiak 2008: 132). He also observes that

“most English vowels come between Polish vowels located nearby” (Sobkowiak 2008: 130). On

the other hand, Nowak (2006) has found that “the “soft” consonants have a very strong impact on

Polish vowels in both the F1 domain and the F2 domain (although the impact of many other

consonants is also non-negligible) and that this impact wanes as the duration of the vowel

increases. We take it to be a clear demonstration of the applicability of the target undershoot

model to the variability of 373 Polish vowels and we believe that it is appropriate to describe this

variability as “vowel reduction” (Nowak 2006: 372-373).

Thus, the present paper attempts to verify the claim that phonetic vowel reduction is

universal (Farnetani and Busa 1999; Vayra et al. 1999; Nikolaidis 2003; Flemming 2005) in two

typologically unrelated languages and across two speech styles of various degree of formality. In

this paper, two specific research questions are addressed. First, the study investigates the extent to

which vowels are reduced in spontaneous speech in comparison with read speech in Polish and

English. The second research question pertains to the role of speech rate in vowel reduction, as is

assumed in previous scholarship (Jurafsky et al. 1998, Shockey 2003). It is then hypothesized that

(1) vowels exhibit stronger reduction in fully spontaneous speech in comparison with read speech

in the two languages (2) vowel reduction in spontaneous speech is more robust in English and

considerably less so in Polish due to typological differences (3) speakers with high speech rate

reduce vowels to a greater extent than slow speakers. Therefore, in addition to providing more

data on differences between read and spontaneous styles for vowel reduction in Polish and

English, the results might inform the debate on the role of speech rate in reduction of vowels.

5
2. The methodology of the study

The data (both read and spontaneous) come from two corpora: Phonologie de l’Anglais

Contemporain and The Greater Poland Speech Corpus.

2.1 Phonologie de l‘Anglais Contemporain

The Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties, and structure is a project gathering a

series of corpora whose purpose is “to attain an effective and factual description and comparison

of various accents of English” (Durand and Pukli 2004: 2). Based on a common protocol and

following a uniform methodology, the project investigates contemporary English accents. In

2014, the corpus was composed of 31 surveys around the English-speaking world, 289 interviews

and approximately 240 hours of validated recordings (http://www.projet-

pac.net/index.php/corpora) date of access 06.11.2015)

For the purpose of the present study, the Lancashire corpus was used which comprises

recordings of 9 female speakers, aged 23-83. The corpus contains 4 sets of data: formal

interview, informal interview, a text passage, the word list. The word list includes 127 lexical

items representing English vowels and 65 lexical items representing English consonants. The data

selected for the present study come from the word list as well as the informal interview (cf.

section 2.3 for more details of data selection).

2.2 The Greater Poland Speech Corpus

The Greater Poland Speech Corpus is collected within the project Internetowy Korpus

współczesnego, mówionego standardowego języka polskiego i gwary na obszarze Wielkopolski

(The Internet corpus of contemporary Polish standard and vernacular spoken in the area of

Greater Poland). It must be stressed that the current project, though different from PAC in many

respects, was inspired by the methodology applied to PAC.

6
 The Corpus is collected with the view to registering spontaneous speech data, as opposed

to televised or radio performances (scripted or unscripted) of standard language users (eventually

approximately 70 speakers) as well as vernacular users (eventually approximately 20 speakers)

from the province of Greater Poland. The corpus collecting procedure consists of three stages: 1)

subjects fill in a metadata questionnaire; 2) subjects participate in a spontaneous conversation; 3)

subjects read a set of test words embedded in carrier phrases.

The high-quality of the recording is ensured by using a professional Roland R-26 recorder

and the lapel lavalier Rode microphones. The files are saved as a WAV format. The subjects are

recorded in a quiet room during the spontaneous conversation session and in a sound-proof room

while reading the carrier phrases.

In order to ensure the highest degree of informality, the speakers are recorded in a 2+2

interview format, i.e. two interviewees who know each other hold a conversation with two

interviewers. The interview lasts for about 40 minutes and covers a range of topics such as

studies and student life in Poznań, living, culture and entertainment in Poznań, as well as the

Internet use. The spontaneous speech session is followed by a reading task. In this task, subjects

are asked to read a set of 182 carrier phrases containing the test words. The sentences are

presented to the subjects in a randomised order.

Upon the completion of the project the electronic version of the corpus (transcripts and

audio files) will be available on the website http://wa.amu.edu.pl/korpuswlkp/.

2.3 The study

The aim and hypotheses. The aim of the study was to analyse the process of vowel reduction in

two typologically different languages, namely English and Polish, in two styles, reading vs

7
spontaneous speech. Two criteria of vowel reduction were measured: vowel duration and the

value of F1 and F2. Three hypotheses were tested:

Hypothesis 1: Vowels exhibit stronger reduction in fully spontaneous speech in comparison with

read speech in the two (typologically different) languages.

Hypothesis 2: Vowel reduction in spontaneous speech is more robust in English and considerably

less so in Polish due to typological differences.

Hypothesis 3: Speakers with high speech rate reduce vowels to a greater extent than slow

speakers.

The subjects. The subjects of the study were nine female speakers of Lancashire English and nine

(four male and five female) speakers of Polish. The English subjects were aged 23-83. The

speakers of Polish were aged 20-22 and came from the area of Greater Poland.

The material and procedure. The hypotheses were tested on the basis of three vowels: English

KIT, TRAP and FOOT and Polish /ɨ/, /a/ and /u/ as in byty ‘entities’, baty ‘whips’ and buty

‘shoes’. For the study of English, the authors investigated 1 token of each vowel from the word

list and 5 words per vowel extracted mostly from the informal interview (occasionally from the

informal interview). In Polish, 3 tokens of each vowel from the word list (i.e. carrier phrase) as

well as 3 words per each vowel per speaker from the interview were examined. Altogether in

English, the authors obtained 27 tokens from scripted speech and 135 tokens from spontaneous

speech. For Polish, 81 tokens from scripted speech and the same number from spontaneous

speech were obtained. In total, 324 word tokens were analysed.

As regards the selection of words for analysis, the following criteria were considered: in

English (relatively) high-frequency (mostly) one-syllable words were selected; reducible

grammar words such as could were avoided; in Polish (relatively) high-frequency (mostly) two-

syllable words were selected where the focus vowel appeared in a stressed position. Another
8
important criterion in the word selection process was the phonetic environment of vowels. In

order to facilitate the process of acoustic analysis, the selected vowels occurred in the direct

neighbourhood of obstruents. The table below presents all lexical items whose vowels were

analysed acoustically.

Table 2: Words selected for analysis.

style IPA English IPA Polish

scripted /ɪ/ pit / thick ɨ byty ‘entities’

/æ/ pat a baty ‘whips’

/ʊ/ put u buty ‘shoes’
unscripted /ɪ/ this ɨ chyba ‘I guess’
big szybko ‘fast’
bit wszystko ‘everything’
fix wszyscy ‘everybody’
/æ/ back a czasy ‘times’
bad czasem ‘sometimes’
dad czasami ‘sometimes’
had zasadzie ‘basically’
have (= possess) zawsze ‘always’
haven’t
/ʊ/ good u dużo ‘a lot’
put różne ‘various’
took tutaj ‘here’

Upon extracting the words from the transcripts, the vowels underwent manual annotation in Praat
(Boersma and Weenink 2014).

Figure 3: Exemplary annotation in Praat.

Speech rate. Speech rate was operationalized as articulatory rate, i.e. without hesitation pauses

and filled pauses and expressed as syllables per second. Local rate was not considered in this

9
article on purpose on the grounds that the study, among other things, seeks to verify whether the

fastest speakers exhibit the highest reduction degree, rather than intending to perform an in-depth

correlation of speech rate with a variety of factors where such a fine-grained method of

calculating speech rate would be more appropriate (cf. section 4). For assessing the connection

between vowel reduction and speech rate, Pearson correlation was used (hypothesis 3). Size

effects for comparison of reduction across two languages (hypothesis 2) were given with the aid

of a one-way Anova (between groups comparison).

3. Results

In order to tease apart vowel reduction from speech style and cross-linguistic differences, the

results are arranged according to the temporal and spectral domains of vowel production.

3.1. Results for the first hypothesis

It was hypothesized that vowels exhibit stronger reduction in fully spontaneous speech in

comparison with read speech in the two languages. The comparison of the means, obtained in the

current study revealed that there were statistically significant differences for both Polish (read

M=84.88, SD=11.7, spontaneous M=49.01, SD=13.89) and English (read M=131.68, SD=13.17,

spontaneous M=76.54, SD=18.52) between read and spontaneous speech with regard to duration

of vowels. As for the Student t-test, there were 162 vowel tokens per each language, t (160) =

1.975, the p value (one-tailed) of the obtained data is 0.04, indicating a satisfactory degree of

statistical reliability.

10
 131,6833333

140
120
76,54740741
100
[miliseconds] 80
60
79,56111111
40
20 50,45153325 English

0
Polish
read
spontaneous

Figure 4: Means of duration for speech styles.

According to Figure 4, the ratio of means of vowel duration in spontaneous speech was 58 per

cent in English and 63 per cent in Polish, relative to read speech (p<0.05). This is a considerable

difference across speech styles, pointing to a temporal undershoot in spontaneous speech in

comparison with the read speech style. For distribution of reduction across the KIT, TRAP and

FOOT vowels in English and /ɨ/, /a/ and /u/ in Polish, the analysis indicated that there was a

certain variability among them and between the two languages considered:

11
 160,00 146,25
140,00 120,59 128,21
120,00
[miliseconds]
100,00
80,00
95,95
60,00
92,94 74,66
40,00 59,04
67,77
20,00 77,97
0,00 38,70

ɨ/ɪ 65,91
a/æ
read u/ʊ
read 46,74
read English
ɨ/ɪ
Polish
spont a/æ
spont u/ʊ
spont

Figure 5: Distribution of temporal differences across vowels.

100%
90%
75%
80% 71%
70% 60%
57% ɪ/ɨ
60% 49% 51%
50% æ/a
40% ʊ/u
30%
20%
10%
0%
spont to read English spont to read Polish

Figure 6: Distribution of temporal differences across vowels (per cent).

As it emerges from Figures 5 and 6, the three vowels, considered in the study, did not display

similar patterns for temporal reduction. Thus, in Polish, the low central vowel /a/ was reduced to

12
the lowest degree (as its realization in spontaneous speech was 71 per cent of its realization in

read speech), whereas the FOOT vowel was the most reduction-resistant in English (p<0.05).

These differences stem from different arrangement of vowels and density of population of the

respective vowel spaces (Figures 1 and 2).

Turning to the spectral aspect of reduction, the outcomes for differences between read and

spontaneous speech are presented below. Note that English female speakers were compared to

Polish female speakers, whereas no English male speakers from the PAC corpus were available

to compare with Polish male speakers (cf. section 2).

F2 [Hz]
3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0
0
100
200
300 read eng

F1[Hz]
400 spont eng
ɪ ʊ
500
600
700
800
æ 900

Figure 7: Read vs. spontaneous for English females (formants).

13
 F2 [Hz]
2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0
0
100
200
300 read pl
ɨ u

F1 [Hz]
400 spont pl
500
600
a
700
800
900

Figure 8: Read vs. spontaneous for Polish females (formants).

Table 3: Means of spectral differences.

ɪ æ ʊ
F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2
read eng 554.7754 2451.198 820.21 1500.19 536.0963 1044.226
spont eng 439.3162 2035.824 775.52 1618.92 488.5739 1312.172
SD 81.64195 293.7137 31.59855 83.96058 33.6034 189.4659
ɨ a u
F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2
read pl 493.3909 1967.504 771.65 1461.09 438.0125 1157.88
spont pl 333.764 1548.953 590.70 1591.08 262.5527 989.158
SD 112.8733 295.9606 127.9543 91.9207 124.0688 119.3045

The analysis of differences between vowel space in read and spontaneous speech styles confirms

the findings for duration and provides support for the first hypothesis, stipulating that vowels in

spontaneous speech are reduced more in comparison with read speech.

14
3.2. Results for the second hypothesis

The second hypothesis put forward in this study is related to the typologically-based assumption

that overall, vowel reduction is robust in English and considerably less so in Polish due to

differences in the vowel inventories. In order to provide further insight into the relative

differences between reduction in the two languages, a between-group differences for duration and

formants was calculated by means of a one-way Anova. For these calculations, means of the three

vowels were considered, following the idea of centralization (see section 1) and comparing the

shrinking of the vowel space in spontaneous speech since it was subject to reduction, relative to

read speech (Figures 5-8). The number of analyzed vowel tokens for spontaneous speech was 216

(81 for Polish and 135 for English).

Table 4: Means for speech styles.

spontaneous Polish spontaneous English

means SD means SD
duration [ms] 49.01 13.89 76.54 18.52
F1 [Hz] 400.73 133.95 567.8 181.56
F2 [Hz] 1361.04 217.32 1651.63 363.22

As far as duration of vowel is concerned, the difference between spontaneous Polish and English

is significant F (1,216) = 133.738, p = 0.000. Turning to formants, a significant difference across

languages for F1 was found: F1, F (1,216) = 51.669, p = 0.000. The comparison of F2 between

spontaneous Polish and read English was also significant ((F (1,216) = 42.636, p = 0.000).

To sum up, as hypothesized, a one-way Anova revealed a main effect of reduction, both

in its temporal and spectral aspects, suggesting that English vowels in spontaneous speech were

reduced significantly more robustly than in Polish.

15
3.3. Results for the third hypothesis

The third hypothesis verified the role of speech rate in vowel reduction. In particular, it stipulated

that speakers with high speech rate reduce more than slow speakers. Below, articulatory rates for

speakers from two corpora are presented:

Table 5: Articulatory rate (ranked).

English rate (sps) age Polish rate (sps)

ST 4.26 30 M24 6.17
PK 4.05 58 M32 6.01
MO 3.74 83 M35 5.63
MC 3.53 71 M34 5.39
JM 3.43 23 M23 5.33
LB 3.35 38 M21 5.31
SC 2.98 40 M33 5.2
LC 2.81 77 M22 4.92
MD 2.65 23 M25 4.9

It must be observed that rates for Polish are significantly higher than for English. This can be

accounted for in terms of age differences: Polish speaker’s age ranged from 20 to 22, whereas the

age for English speakers ranged from 23 to 83. Indeed, previous scholarship has found that

younger speakers tend to speak faster (e.g. Verhoeven et al. 2004; Raymond et al. 2006; Jacewicz

et al. 2009).

As for correlation between reduction and articulatory rate, it was run separately for

duration, F1 and F2.

16
 100%
90%
80%

reduction (duration)
70%
60%
50%
English
40%
Polish
30%
20%
10%
0%
0,00 1,00 2,00 3,00 4,00 5,00 6,00 7,00
Rate [sps]

Figure 9: Correlation for articulatory rate and reduction of duration.

Surprisingly, for English, the correlation was negative and non-existent (r=-0.06). This implies

that fastest speakers did not necessarily reduce their duration of vowels to the highest degree. By

contrast, certain correlation, albeit feeble, was found in Polish (r=0.58), providing support for

hypothesis three.

Figure 10 attested to the lack of correlation between articulatory rate and F1 which runs

counter to the hypothesis (r=0.14 for English and 0.02 for Polish). It appears that with respect to

the tongue height, reduction is not a function of speech rate.

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 100%
90%
80%
70%
reduction (F1) 60%
50%
English
40%
Polish
30%
20%
10%
0%
0,00 1,00 2,00 3,00 4,00 5,00 6,00 7,00
Rate [sps]

Figure 10: Correlation for articulatory rate and reduction of F1.

Analysis of the link between F2 and articulatory rate reveals two opposing trends: a weak

correlation was found in Polish (r=0.41), whereas in English, no such correlation was established

(r=-0.27). Furthermore, the correlation found for English was negative which stands in stark

contrast to the outcome obtained for Polish.

100%
90%
80%
70%
reduction (F2)

60%
50%
English
40%
Polish
30%
20%
10%
0%
0,00 1,00 2,00 3,00 4,00 5,00 6,00 7,00
Rate [sps]

Figure 11: Correlation for articulatory rate and reduction of F2.

18
4. Discussion

In light of the obtained results, the two first hypotheses were positively verified, whereas the third

one produced mixed results. The study establishes a significant difference in vowel reduction

across two speech styles, read and fully spontaneous across two unrelated languages (Figures 5, 7

and 8). This is highly consistent with the results, reported in Table 1. All vowel tokens, with the

notable exception of certain tokens of the /u/ vowel in Polish, were shorter and centralized in

spontaneous speech, relative to their duration as well as placed in less peripheral positions than in

read speech. These tendencies were observed in Polish and English alike, with the exception of

the extent of reduction process. It has been shown that reduction in English is considerably

stronger than in Polish (Table 4) which is in agreement with certain aspects of Polish phonology

(lack of schwa, Jassem 2003). The very fact of undergoing the process of centralization in Polish,

observed in the current study, is compatible with the findings of Nowak (2006). Thus, the

analysis of 324 vowel tokens from two corpora attests to the effects of speech style on vowel

reduction and provides support to the claim that phonetic reduction, found in the study, is present

in Polish which has no central vowels as a part of the system.

With respect to the third hypothesis, assuming a straightforward relationship between

speech rate and reduction, the findings of the current study did not provide a definite answer. To

a certain extent, the correlation between rate and duration was found in Polish (r=0.58) but not in

English (r=-0.06). This outcome may be partly explained by the fact that the population of Polish

subjects was very homogenous age-wise. In comparison, English speakers were significantly

more diversified as an age group. Considering previous studies on age and rate which point to

higher speech rate among younger speakers (Verhoeven et al. 2004, Raymond et al. 2006,

Jacewicz et al. 2009), the result for English is surprising. To complicate matters further, a

19
different picture emerges when the correlations between rate and F1 and F2 are taken into

account. The correlations, spanning the range from -0.02 to 0.41, suggest that articulatory rate

exerts no influence on vowel reduction in its spatial aspect. It must be noted here that most of the

literature, reporting a relationship between rate and reduction (e.g. Jurafsky et al. 1998, Fosler-

Lussier and Morgan 1999) has been based upon studies of duration alone, disregarding formants.

Since speech rate has been shown to affect duration, there is no reason to take duration as a proxy

for overall reduction of vowels, which in addition to length, consists in formant changes. Perhaps

it would be necessary to draw a line between spatial and temporal reduction in search of any link

between rate and reduction of vowels. The paper tentatively suggests that these two, the spatial

and the temporal aspect, may be trending in different directions. Alternatively, the results

obtained here may also lead to a suggestion that lexical times of high frequency (dużo ‘a lot’,

wszyscy ‘everybody’, tutaj ‘here’, czasu ‘time’ (Gen. Sg), this, have, good) may be undergoing

the process of lexicalization in the speaker’s phonology and as such, might be growing

impervious to the effects of articulatory rate. Nevertheless, the issue whether fast speech indeed

fosters vowel reduction as it is commonly assumed, remains an open question, well worthy of

further investigation: “casual speech need not to be fast; some speakers [...] use a quite informal

speech even at fairly slow rates of speech, while others [...] give the impression of great precision

even in hurried speech” (Zwicky 1972: 607).

5. Implications for further research

The aim of the present paper was to study the process of phonetic vowel reduction in two

typologically different languages (English and Polish) in two speech styles (sentence reading and

spontaneous speech). The results of the study provided evidence that the topic of vowel

reduction, especially in Polish, is worth pursuing further and deserves a more exhaustive

20
treatment. Firstly, the database should be enlarged by analyzing the speech samples from more

speakers (which does not pose a problem for the Polish database, as the corpus includes

recordings of 70 speakers; the Lancashire corpus is at present limited to 9 speakers, however, the

analysis could be extended to other accents of English as well). Secondly, the analysis should be

extended to cover more vowels. Finally, it is worth investigating the correlation between the

vowel reduction and the reduction of consonants and consonant clusters. The question to be

answered is Do speakers who reduce vowels more preserve the consonants in their speech and

vice versa? In other words, is there a compensation strategy (preserving vowels or consonants)

that speakers apply to ensure that the message is intelligible and comprehensible to the listener?.

To answer these questions a parallel study on consonant reduction is needed.

Acknowledgements:

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the National Science Center (grant

number 2012/05/D/HS2/03565) as well as the Ministry of Higher Education within the Program

Narodowy Program Rozwoju Humanistyki (The National Program of Humanities Development) (grant

number: 0113/NPRH2/H11/81/2013).

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