Preserving Prosody in Temporal Distortions of Speech

Temporal properties, such as duration, rate, and rhythm, are crucial aspects influencing the perception and production of speech. To study how these properties affect speech processing, researchers can create retimed experimental stimuli with varying temporal patterns. However, retiming speech also poses significant challenges, such as preserving naturalness, intelligibility, and prosody.In this chapter, we present three methods of altering the acoustic speech signal to achieve a desired rhythmic structure. Each method differs in how it adjusts the timing of the utterance and its segments. The methods are used to create stimuli with regular isochronous stress. We evaluate the methods in terms of how much they disrupt the speech signal and how effective they are in achieving isochrony.Finally, we demonstrate how retiming can be used to produce stimuli with more naturalistic rhythmic characteristics. We show that retiming can be a powerful tool for exploring perceptual effects of timing in speech.