A Review of Recent Research on Speech Rhythm: Some Insights for Language Acquisition, Language disorders and Language Teaching

Abstract

Early research on speech rhythm subscribed to the notion of isochrony, which advocates that the perception of rhythm in speech is based on the regular recurrence of some form of speech unit. On the basis of whether stresses or syllables were isochronous, Pike (1945) and Abercrombie (1967: 97) distinguished between ’stress-timed’ and ’syllable- timed’ languages. In stress-timed languages, interstress intervals or feet are believed to be isochronous. A foot consists of a stressed syllable and any number of unstressed syllables up to, but not including, the next stressed syllable. On the other hand, in ‘syllable-timed’ languages, it is the syllables that are said to be perceived to recur at equal intervals in time. However, early research has shown that prefect isochrony is an idealized state and isochrony is now described as a tendency, with scholars ascribing to the notion of a rhythm continuum where languages fall somewhere along the continuum between between ‘stress- based’ and ‘syllable-based’ languages (Dauer, 1983; Miller, 1984). This section will provide an overview of early research on speech rhythm which led to the rejection of the notion of prefect isochrony, some of which can be found in the background section of a paper by Grabe and Low (2002).