Coordinative patterns underlying cross-linguistic rhythmic differences

Publication date: Available online 12 November 2018Source: Journal of PhoneticsAuthor(s): Leonardo Lancia, Georgy Krasovitsky, Franziska StuntebeckAbstractWe propose a new approach to characterize cross-linguistic differences in the rhythmic structure of speech utterances by studying the degree of coordination between the production of syllables and the production of prosodic prominence at the level of the word. With this approach we compare languages traditionally considered as stress-timed (English and German) and syllable-timed (French and Italian), as well as a language that on the basis of phonological considerations does not seem to belong to either class (Polish). We analyzed recorded narrations elicited with the Pear Story technique from 26 speakers (on average 5 per language) under two elicitation conditions. The results suggest that processes underlying the production of syllables and those underlying the production of prosodic prominence are more tightly coordinated in the Germanic languages analyzed than in Romance languages. The status of Polish on the other hand is more ambiguous because while its results differ from Romance languages, the differences depend on the condition of elicitation. Overall our results suggest that the coordination between syllable production and prominence production is a pertinent dimension for the discrimination of the rhythmic characteristics of languages.
Source: Journal of Phonetics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research