Global and local durational properties in three varieties of South African English

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between the global and local durational properties of an utterance. We show that languages that are similar in terms of their global durational properties are also similar in terms of their local durational properties. However, languages that differ globally also differ locally. We illustrate this with three varieties of South African English. We show that South African English L1 and Afrikaans English both pattern with stress-timed languages and both apply phrase-final lengthening. Tswana English, however, patterns with syllable-timed languages, and does not apply phrase-final lengthening.