Stylistic Coherence in Individual Prosodic Variability

The past decade has witnessed an explosion of studies comparing speech rhythm across various language varieties, many using the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI, ‎[6]). This renewal of interest in the cross-linguistic typology of prosodic rhythm has been accompanied by cautions that common acoustic measures of rhythm are highly variable between speakers (‎[5]). This paper introduces evidence that, far from representing noise or unreliability, such variability is itself meaningful. Many PVI studies attempt to reduce between-speaker variability with controls on the materials used, and some (‎[1]) have assessed the relative suitability of different "versions" of the PVI according to their degree of inter-speaker stability. Even the numerous studies that have used the PVI to examine within-language variation, by dialect (‎[6], ‎[8]), native speaker status (‎[7]), or other a priori criteria, have paid minimal attention to the meaning of individual differences on rhythmic measures, despite findings from [5], ‎[4] and ‎[2] clearly demonstrating the need for such considerations. I examine data from three female and three male characters in the (Mandarin) Chinese serial TV drama Nü ren hua 'Woman flowers' in order to investigate individual variation in prosodic rhythm. I measured normalized syllabic PVI (nSPVI, ‎[1], ‎[7]), the variation coefficient of ΔS (VarcoS, ‎[3]) and another, non-prosodic, suprasegmental variable, the presence of creaky phonation. Figure 1, below, summarizes the measurements of these variables for female speakers HMR (N = 230 syls), LXL (N = 244 syls), and OYX (N = 280 syls).