formal style: I should most certainly like to attend your ball, Sir Reginald.
colloquial style: I’d love to come to your do, Reg.
Alternation rules determine the possible choice of “alternatives” from
a number of speech styles or stylistic features which are at the speaker’s
disposal, e.g.
formal style: Good morning, Mrs Smith...
semi-formal style: Hullo...
colloquial style: Hi, Penny...speech synthesis n
the automatic synthesis of speech-like sounds by a computer using a speech
synthesizer or voice synthesizer, such as when a computer takes printed
text as input and produces a spoken version of it. Many of the recorded
messages heard on the telephone are not natural language but are produced
by speech synthesis.
see also digitized speech, computational linguistics
speech synthesizer n
see voice synthesizer
speech therapy n
activities and exercises which are designed to help to alleviate or cure a
language or speech defect (e.g. stuttering) or to help someone to regain
their use of speech after having suffered speech loss (e.g. after a stroke).
A person who works in the field of speech therapy is called a speech
therapist.
see also speech pathology
speech variety n
a term sometimes used instead of language^2 , dialect, sociolect,
pidgin, creole, etc., because it is considered more neutral than such terms.
It may also be used for different varieties of one language, e.g. American
English, Australian English, Indian English.
speech vocabulary n
the total number of words a person uses as part of his or her spoken
language repertoire.
see active /passive language knowledge
speeded test n
also speed test
a type of test where not every test taker is expected to finish the test because
the time allowed to complete it is limited. The difficulty level of the items on
speeded test