The role of tempo and pitch in rhythm class discrimination.

Abstract

According to the well‐known rhythm typology, languages are stress‐, syllable‐, and mora‐timed, a distinction said to be supported by AAX (oddball) experiments in which listeners fail to discriminate between languages of the same rhythm class. However, results show that in some such cases discrimination is possible (e.g., between Polish and English), suggesting that factors other than timing may play a part. Here the hypothesis that tempo and pitch drive discrimination was tested. English was the context language (AA) to which Spanish, Korean, and Danish (X) were compared. The consonantal intervals of the original sentences were replaced by [s] and the vocalic intervals by [a]. Interval relative timing was held constant; tempo was either that of the original utterances or replaced by the average from all stimuli. For each tempo condition, pitch was either flat or a synthesized version of each utterance’s original F0. Original F0 greatly facilitated discrimination, while flat F0 and average tempo hindered d...