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Convergence of articulation rate in spontaneous speech

This paper presents results from a project on phonetic convergence in German spontaneous speech. We used linear mixed models to examine 22 unimodal and 24 multimodal dialogs for articulation rate. We show that speakers’ local articulation rates are influenced by the preceding rates of their interlocutors, and that the direction of this influence (i.e., divergence or convergence) depends on social factors, viz. interactants’ mutual likeability scores. More specifically, we found that in general there was a “default” effect of divergence in articulation rates which was not mediated by social factors. However, this effect was weakened or reversed for higher mutual liking scores, i.e. the degree of convergence increased with the liking scores. Furthermore, while it has recently been suggested that convergence may be enhanced in multimodal settings, we did not find an effect of modality on convergence. However, there was an effect of modality on articulation rate in general.