Stress-timed language

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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.

[edit] See Also

• Timing (linguistics)
• Syllable-timed language
• Mora-timed language

[edit] 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)