About the Pace of Speech in Academic Textbooks on Phonetics and Phonology of the Polish Language

Abstract

Pace as a component of the supra-segmental layer of speech is of interest to linguists, speech therapists, as well as acousticians and representatives of other disciplines dealing with the processing and perception of speaking time. In speech therapy, the pace is subject to speech therapy diagnosis usually only when it is affected, i.e. accelerated or decelerated. When talking about decelerating or accelerating, one should refer to the norm setting the so-called average or normal pace. In addition, it is necessary to clarify whether we are talking about the pace of articulation, speaking, speech or pronunciation. In search of sources of information on this subject, reference was made to academic textbooks on phonetics and phonology of the Polish language, which are also used in the process of speech therapists’ education. The article analyses the way of describing pace in selected studies and academic textbooks on phonetics and phonology of the Polish language, its characteristics as one of the aspects that constitute the phonic layer of a statement. The review includes works published over almost 100 years: from the works of Kazimierz Wóycicki from 1912, Jan Rozwadowski and Kazimierz Nitsch from 1925, to the publication by Bogusław Dunaj in 2015.