Speech rhythm: a metaphor?

Is speech rhythmic? In the absence of evidence for a traditional view that languages strive to coordinate either syllables or stress-feet with regular time intervals, we consider the alternative that languages exhibit contrastive rhythm subsisting merely in the alternation of stronger and weaker elements. This is initially plausible, particularly for languages with a steep ‘prominence gradient’, i.e. a large disparity between stronger and weaker elements; but we point out that alternation is poorly achieved even by a ‘stress-timed’ language such as English, and, historically, languages have conspicuously failed to adopt simple phonological remedies that would ensure alternation. Languages seem more concerned to allow ‘syntagmatic contrast’ between successive units and to use durational effects to support linguistic functions than to facilitate rhythm. Furthermore, some languages (e.g. Tamil, Korean) lack the lexical prominence which would most straightforwardly underpin prominence alternation. We conclude that speech is not incontestibly rhythmic, and may even be antirhythmic. However, its linguistic structure and patterning allow the metaphorical extension of rhythm in varying degrees and in different ways depending on the language, and that it is this analogical process which allows speech to be matched to external rhythms

Rhythm Class Perception by Expert Phoneticians

This paper contributes to the recent debate in linguistic-phonetic rhythm research dominated by the idea of a perceptual dichotomy involving “syllable-timed” and “stress-timed” rhythm classes. Some previous studies have shown that it is difficult both to find reliable acoustic correlates of these classes and also to obtain reliable perceptual data for their support. In an experiment, we asked 12 British English phoneticians to classify the rhythm class of 36 samples spoken by 24 talkers in six dialects of British English. Expert listeners’ perception was shown to be guided by two factors: (1) the assumed rhythm class affiliation of a particular dialect and (2) one acoustic cue related to the prosodic hierarchy, namely the degree of accentual lengthening. We argue that the rhythm class hypothesis has reached its limits in informing empirical enquiry into linguistic rhythm, and new research avenues are needed to understand this multi-layered phenomenon

Phonetic convergence in temporal organization during shadowed speech

The goal of this study was to examine phonetic convergence (when one imitates the phonetic characteristics of another talker) in various measures of temporal organization during shadowed speech across different American English dialects. Participants from the Northern and Midland American English dialect regions, plus several "mobile" talkers, were asked to read 72 sentences to establish a baseline for temporal organization, and then to repeat the same 72 sentences after Northern, Midland, and Southern model talkers. Measures of temporal organization (i.e., %V, ΔC, ΔV, rPVI-C, and nPVI-V) were calculated for the read sentences, shadowed sentences, and model talker sentences. Statistical analysis of the differences in distance between the model talker sentences and the shadowers' read and shadowed sentences, respectively, revealed significant convergence by all three shadowing groups toward the model dialects for ΔV, and significant divergence by Mobile talkers away from the model talkers for nPVI-V. Though the result of divergence by Mobile talkers was unexpected, both results provide evidence that support previous studies, which claim that social perception is a large contributing factor in convergence and divergence. These results are also consistent with previous findings demonstrating variation across dialects in temporal organization and, in addition, provide evidence for variation across dialects in convergence in temporal organization.The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research ScholarshipNo embargoAcademic Major: Linguistic

An acoustic investigation of the developmental trajectory of lexical stress contrastivity in Italian

We examined whether typically developing Italian children exhibit adult-like stress contrastivity for word productions elicited via a picture naming task (n=25 children aged 3\u20135 years and 27 adults). Stimuli were 10 trisyllabic Italian words; half began with a weak\u2013strong (WS) pattern of lexical stress across the initial 2 syllables, as in patata, while the other half began with a strong\u2013weak (SW) pattern, as in gomito. Word productions that were identified as correct via perceptual judgement were analysed acoustically. The initial 2 syllables of each correct word production were analysed in terms of the duration, peak intensity, and peak fundamental frequency of the vowels using a relative measure of contrast\u2014the normalised pairwise variability index (PVI). Results across the majority of measures showed that children\u2019s stress contrastivity was adult-like. However, the data revealed that children\u2019s contrastivity for trisyllabic words beginning with a WS pattern was not adult-like regarding the PVI for vowel duration: children showed less contrastivity than adults. This effect appeared to be driven by differences in word-medial gemination between children and adults. Results are compared with data from a recent acoustic study of stress contrastivity in English speaking children and adults and discussed in relation to language-specific and physiological motor-speech constraints on production

The invalidity of rhythm class hypothesis

Languages are said to be stress-timed, syllable-timed or mora-timed. In a stress-timed language, inter-stress intervals are or tend to be constant, hence, isochronous, while in a syllable-timed or mora-timed language, successive syllables or morae are or tent to be equal in duration. Empirical research has failed to find evidence of isochrony in any language, yet the hypothesis is now sustained by perception accounts or phonetic metrics that do not measure isochrony. We have re-examined the rhythm class hypothesis by looking for evidence of at least a tendency toward isochrony, through a comparison of English, an alleged stress-timed language, and Mandarin, an alleged syllable-timed language. The results show that in English, segments are not compressible to allow equal syllable duration, and syllables are incompressible to enable equal inter-stress interval duration and phrase duration. In contrast, Mandarin shows a small tendency toward both equal syllable duration and equal phrase duration. These findings are exactly the opposite of what would be predicted by the rhythm class hypothesis. We therefore argue that the hypothesis is not just flawed, but simply untenable, and the so-called rhythm classes should no longer be held as a basic fact of human language

Looking for Rhythm in Speech

A brief review is provided of the study of rhythm in speech. Much of that activity has focused on looking for empirical measures that would support the categorization of languages into discrete rhythm ‘types’. That activity has had little success, and has used the term ‘rhythm’ in increasingly unmusical and unintuitive ways. Recent approaches to conversation that regard speech as a whole-body activity are found to provide considerations of rhythm that are closer to the central, musical, sense of the term

English lexical stress, prominence and rhythm

English speech rhythm is closely associated with the patterns of lexical stress and prominence in a stream of speech. Older varieties of English (OVEs), such as British and American English, which usually operate as the model in English language teaching, are often described as ‘stress-timed’, meaning the time between stressed syllables is more or less equal, in comparison with ‘syllable-timed’ languages (e.g., French or Cantonese), for which the time between successive syllable onsets is more or less equal. The usefulness of this distinction, however, has been disputed; e.g., Cauldwell (2002) talks about ‘functional irrythmicality’ in English speech. Cutler (1984) explains that native speakers of English focus on stressed syllables when listening to a stream of speech as part of the decoding process; i.e., for native speakers, lexical stress and the rhythm of the incoming signal play an important part in perception. Couper-Kuhlen and colleagues (e.g., Auer, Couper-Kuhlen, & Müller, 1999) have shown that speech rhythm plays an important part in the coordination of turn-taking in conversation. Anderson-Hsieh and Venkatagiri (1994) argue that speakers’ intelligibility will be affected if they do not sufficiently weaken English unstressed syllables. Such research indicates that the differences in the lexical stress and/or speech rhythm patterns of learners of English, or speakers of New Varieties of English (NVEs) which are not ‘stress-timed’, could create difficulties in comprehension and cooperative interaction for native speakers of OVEs and also, plausibly, for other speakers of English if they are using similar strategies. However, whether the majority of speakers of English in the world have a speaker of an OVE as their target interlocutor is coming increasingly under question. This chapter gives an overview of English lexical stress, prominence and speech rhythm in OVEs, including theoretical approaches to their description, and includes suggestions for pedagogical approaches for the English language classroom