Function words ( the, that, and, of, . . . ) vary widely in pronunciation. Understanding this variation is essential both for cognitive modeling of lexic al production and for computer speech recognition and synthesis. This study investigates which f a tors affect the forms of function words, especially whether they have a fuller pronunciation (e.g.,Di, Dæt, ænd, 2v) or a more reduced or lenited pronunciation (e.g., D D1t, n, ). It is based on over 8000 occurrences of ten frequent English function words in a four-hour sample from c onversations from the Switchboard corpus. Ordinary linear and logistic regression mode ls w re used to examine variation in the length of the words, in the form of their vowel (basic, f ull, or reduced), and whether final obstruents were present or not. For all these measures, afte r controlling for segmental context, rate of speech, and other important factors, there are stron g independent effects that made function words more likely to be longer or have a fuller form (1) wh en neighboring disfluencies (such as filled pauses uhandum) indicate that the speaker was encountering problems in pla nning the utterance; (2) when the word is unexpected, i.e less predictable in context; (3) when the word is either utterance-initial or utterance-final. Lo oking at the phenomenon in a different way, function words are more likely to be shorter and to have l ess full forms in fluent speech, in predictable positions or multi-word collocations, and u tterance-internally. Also considered are other factors such as sex (women are more likely to use ful ler orms, even after controlling for rate of speech, for example), and some of the differences among the ten function words in their response to the factors.
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