Homophone Pairs and the Influence of Lemma Frequency on Word Duration in Spontaneous Speech (Corpus and Experimental Study)

The research focuses on the theory of frequency inheritance and affects of the lemma frequency on the word duration in spontaneous speech using the example of homophones in the Russian language. The first part of this research is a corpus study based on the material of two corpora — the corpus of everyday Russian speech “One Speech Day” (ORD) and the Multimedia Russian Corpus (MURCO). We studied 12 pairs of homophones, determined the frequency of each of the 24 elements and measured their durations, which were then used to find truncated mean values in a strong and weak phrase position. Then we made a comparison of the mean value of the durations of homophones in pairs. The second part of the research is an experiment in which participants retold short texts with the required homophones. Durations of pronounced homophones were measured and their mean values were again compared. Obtained results indicate that homophones with different frequencies have different durations.