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In every language, speech emission is based on a sequence of elementary sound units; some of them play a specific part: through their isochronic recurrence, they produce the rhythm of the sentences. In a 'stress-timed language', these rhythm units are stressed syllables. English is a stress-timed language; that is, stressed syllables appear at a roughly constant rate, and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate this. Other languages have syllable timing (e.g. Spanish) or mora timing (e.g. Japanese), where syllables or morae are spoken at a roughly constant rate regardless of stress.
However, such a classification should be used carefully, a spoken language being less settled than a written language ; thus the way the rhythm is produced may vary from one region to another, or with time.
Germanic languages, especially English and Dutch are examples of stress-timed languages. The Slavic languages, like Russian are generally also stress-timed.

Contents

See also

External links

See also

★ Timing (linguistics)

★ Syllable-timed language

★ Mora-timed language

★ Weak form and strong form

External links

★ Étude sur la discrimination des langues par la prosodie (pdf document) (French)

★ Languages’ rhythm and language acquisition (pdf document)

★ Supra-segmental Phonology (rhythm, intonation and stress-timing)