Rhythmic structures in content word untterances.

Abstract

This study investigates rhythmic structures in the utterances composed of only content words. Content words are potentially accentable in utterance, and English necessitates a rhythmic alternation between strong and weak beats. What will happen if only content words are sequenced and they are all one‐syllable words? A phonetic experiment was conducted to see if a rhythmic pattern is still produced in content word utterances and how it is manifested along the intonational contours. Results showed that merely 7% of the utterances were produced with every content word accented. Most utterances were rhythmically produced with every two (38%) or three (26%) words accented, and the other patterns such as a H* and L* alternation, two H*’s intervened with L‐, and consecutive downstepped H*’s were interpreted as conforming the tonal rhythm [J.‐K. Lee and S. Kang, Korean J. Speech Sci., 10(2), 303–317 (2003)]. In two‐syllable content word utterances, the patterns where two words were unaccented suggest that strong and weak rhythmic beats should be counted with the number of words rather than syllables at the level of utterance. It is proposed that it is an accentual foot as opposed to a lexical foot at the level of lexical word.