XPost: rec.puzzles, alt.usage.english
From: HenHanna@NewsGrouper

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  posted:

>
> https://phys.org/news/2025-08-universal-rhythm-global-analysis-reveals.html
>
> Have you ever noticed that a natural conversation
> flows like a dance—pauses, 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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