Rhythm Metrics Research Articles

The effect of pronunciation teaching on the realization of English rhythm by Korean learners of English*

The current study was designed to explore whether taking English pronunciation classes could improve the realization of English rhythm by Korean learners of English. Specifically, this study used various rhythm metrics to examine the extent to which the learners’ speech became rhythmically similar to the target language after taking classes that focused on English pronunciation. Sixteen learners who took a 15-week English pronunciation course at a university read an English passage twice (at the beginning and the end of the semester). The rhythm metrics such as Deltas, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indices were calculated for the learners’ speech, as well as that of 8 native speakers of English. The results demonstrated that the learners’ speech was slower, and they put more frequent within-sentence pauses than the native speakers even after the classes. The analyses also indicated that the speech recorded at the beginning of the semester was rhythmically much more different from the target language than at the end of the semester. After the classes, however, the learners’ consonantal intervals became much more target-like, while the vocalic intervals were rhythmically even further from those in the target language. Overall, the findings suggested that the pronunciation classes helped the learners to produce English speech that was rhythmically similar to the native speakers.

0693 A Characterization of Social Rhythms in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Abstract Introduction Recent evidence has shown that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is linked to shifts in biologically driven sleep timing, indicating the role of biological rhythms within the disorder. Specifically, initial evidence suggests that biological disruptions in OCD may play a role in symptom severity and OCD treatment efficacy. Germane to the study of biological rhythmicity is the consideration of social rhythms within OCD. Disruptions in social rhythmicity are found in other psychological disorders associated with biological rhythm vulnerabilities (i.e., Bipolar Spectrum Disorder, Depression, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.) Given the shared features and high rates of comorbidity between OCD and these disorders, it is reasonable that social rhythm disruptions would be found in OCD as well. As no research to date has examined this, we sought to examine the regularity and distribution of social rhythm in individuals with clinically significant obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Further, we examined the role of affect and symptom severity across OCD subtypes. Methods 19 adults meeting criteria for a primary diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder completed the Social Rhythm Metric at home for a period of 7 days. As part of a larger study, participants completed measures of sleep (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index), affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), and obsessive-compulsive symptom severity and subtype (Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory) following diagnosis. Results We found the mean social rhythmicity in those with an OCD diagnosis to be 3.05 (SD=1.14.), similar to means found previously in other psychiatric disorders such as Bipolar Spectrum Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Individuals with OCD who also reported delayed bedtimes were shown to have significantly lower social rhythmicity (p=.005) than those without delayed bedtimes. Additionally, we found that social rhythmicity correlated similarly across OCD subtypes and was not strongly correlated with negative affect. Conclusion In the current study, we provide a preliminary characterization of social rhythmicity in those with OCD. Results suggest that social rhythm may play a role in OCD similar to bipolar disorder and further study is warranted. Overall, this study contributes to burgeoning research into the association between biological rhythms and OCD. Support (If Any)

O efeito de tarefa na produção do ritmo por estudantes cantonenses de português como L2

ABSTRACT This study examines L2 Portuguese speech produced by eight native Cantonese speakers from Macao, China. The aims of this study are to investigate (1) whether the speech rhythm in L2 Portuguese is more source-like (more similar to Cantonese) or more target-like (more similar to Portuguese), and (2) whether L2 speech rhythm differs across three different tasks: a reading task, a retelling task, and an interpreting task. Seven rhythm metrics, i.e., %V, ΔC, ΔV, VarcoC, VarcoV, rPVI_C, and nPVI_V, were adopted for comparison and investigation. The results showed that L2 Portuguese rhythm produced by Cantonese speakers differed from L1 Portuguese speakers’ rhythm. R-deletion and vowel epenthesis were the reasons for the variabilities and instabilities of L2 Portuguese production by Cantonese learners, as they affect the duration and the number of vowel intervals and consonantal intervals. Moreover, in Cantonese learners’ L2 Portuguese production, the semi-spontaneous tasks (retelling and interpreting) presented a significant difference from the reading task. The driving force for such a difference was the cognitive load behind the tasks.

Circadian rhythms are not captured equal: Exploring Circadian metrics extracted by differentcomputational methods from smartphone accelerometer and GPS sensors in daily life tracking.

ObjectiveTo identify the differences between circadian rhythm (CR) metrics characterized by different mobile sensors and computational methods.MethodsWe used smartphone tracking and daily survey data from 225 college student participants, applied four methods (survey construct automation, cosinor regression, non-parametric method, Fourier analysis) on two types of smartphone sensor data (GPS, accelerometer) to characterize CR. We explored the inter-relations among the extracted circadian metrics as well as between the circadian metrics and participants’ self-reported mood and sleep outcomes.ResultsCompared to GPS signals, smartphone accelerometer activity follows an intradaily distribution that starts earlier in the day, winds down later, reaches half cumulative activity about the same time, conforms less to a sinusoidal wave, and exhibits more intradaily fragmentation but higher CR strength and lower interdaily disruption. We found a notable negative correlation between intradaily variability and CR strength especially pronounced in GPS activity. Self-reported sleep and mood outcomes showed significant correlations with particular CR metrics.ConclusionsWe revealed significant inter-relations and discrepancies in the circadian metrics discovered from two smartphone sensors and four CR algorithms and their bearings on wellbeing indicators such as sleep quality and loneliness.

Foreign Accentedness Rating and Rhythm in L2 English

To better understand how foreign accentedness is reflected in speech rhythm, the present study examined rhythm patterns in English speech produced by Korean learners of English who learn English as a foreign language. By adopting vocalic-based rhythm metrics such as %V, VarcoV, nPVI-V, the rhythm differences between 32 Korean learners of English and 16 native speakers from North America were compared. Statistical results revealed that %V scores for the weakly accented speech did not differ from that for the strongly accented speech. VarcoV and nPVI-N scores for Korean ESL speakers differed as a function of foreign accent strength. Weakly accented speech group showed significantly lower degree of syllable-timed than strongly accented speech in terms of the two rhythm metrics. These results indicate that rhythm patterns contribute to the native speaker’s perception of foreign accentedness.

Investigating the effect of second language learning on the acquisition of a third language rhythm pattern

Language transfer helps in the acquisition of a second language (L2) when the target L2 shares similarities with the first language (L1). We ask: Does proficiency in an L2 facilitate the acquisition of a structurally similar L3? Or, does training in any L2 help with L3 acquisition? We investigated L2 learners’ ability to reproduce the rhythm of a novel L3, Indonesian, as a function of their exposure to a rhythm-similar language (French) or a rhythm-divergent language (German). Twelve English-speaking students with no college-level language served as control group; six 2nd-year French students served as the rhythm-similar group; and 6 2nd-year German students as the rhythm-divergent group. All produced French, German, and Indonesian sentences in a repetition task with native speaker prompts. Listeners then rated the similarity between their sentences and that of a native speaker. Interval-based rhythm metrics were also computed for the sentences. L2 groups were better at their L2 language than the control group based on the ratings and rhythm measures. They were also perceived as producing better L3 sentences than the control group. Overall, the results suggest that language learning may facilitate subsequent language learning; the effect is not limited to language transfer. [Work supported by NIH.]

Longitudinal changes in sleep patterns and circadian rhythm metrics in preschool-age children from Northern Mexico

ObjectivesTo assess changes in sleep parameters and circadian rhythm metrics measured by actigraphy in preschool-aged children. DesignLongitudinal analysis over 1 year. ParticipantsNinety-four children living in Tijuana and Ensenada, Mexico. MeasurementsChildren wore accelerometers on the right hip for one continuous week at baseline and 1-year follow-up. Parents recorded child bedtime, waketime, and naps in sleep diaries. We used cosinor and nonparametric approaches to calculate circadian rhythm metrics. ResultsAt baseline, children had a mean age of 4.2 years, and 51.1% were girls. In multivariable models adjusted for age, gender, BMI category, parental education, household income and city, at follow-up children had significantly earlier waketimes (β = -7.99 minutes, p < .001) compared to baseline. Children also had lower sleep onset latency (β = -2.32 minutes, p = .057), and longer nighttime sleep (β = 9.38 minutes, p = .079), but these changes were not significant at the α < 0.05 level. We found significant increases in log relative amplitude (β = 0.017, p = .009), and decreases in log midline estimated statistic of rhythm (β = -0.084, p = .017) and log of the least active 5-hour period (β = -0.057, p = .010). When we adjusted for co-sleeping, we found significant decreases in the number of nighttime awakenings (β = -1.29, p = .011) but otherwise similar results. There were no other changes in sleep parameters or circadian rhythm metrics. ConclusionsMean increases in nighttime sleep and earlier wake times over one year were concomitant with decreases in overall activity levels and increases in circadian rhythm robustness. Co-sleeping was a predictor of sleep disturbances. This study provides longitudinal evidence regarding changes in sleep and circadian metrics in a sample of children from an under-researched sociodemographic group during an important, early life period.

МЕТОД ОПТИМІЗАЦІЇ ТИПОКОМПЛЕКТУ СТИЛЮ «FAMILY LOOK» ЗАСОБАМИ ІДЕНТИФІКАЦІЇ ГАРМОНІЇ

The relevance of the distribution of clothing, designed in the style of Family look, is the result of the social demand for expressing family values by the consumers. Updating this style requires the introduction of new types of combinations of the system of artistic images and the development of an assortment concept of creating a capsule wardrobe. The problem of style modernization eliminates such classification features as gender, age, range. The image level of motivation in choosing the range of Family look style is based on the principle of “unisex”, which is due to the condition of the ensemble of the standard items set. The capsule approach to novelty of a family wardrobe provides stylistic balance of subject combinations due to the optimization of qualitative characteristics of a typical set in the Family look style. On the basis of normative definitions of components of family wardrobe the nomenclature of principles of identification of imagery of Family look models is formed. The application of the principle of ensemble of a capsule of a standard set in social function of clothes of Family look on the bases of hierarchy of structure of designing levels is considered: object, gender and age signs, social group, application of subjects. A typological series of options for combining assortment units in the gender and age groups of family members has been developed. The mirror image of the “unisex” principle has been studied by the method of uneven scaling of the areas of standard kits in the grid of product dimensions by the coefficient of proportionality in gender and age groups. A verification database for determining the harmony of the standard set has been developed, which differentiates the information for the scaling procedure: the appearance of the model, assortment units (top, bottom), models’ area, the coefficient of proportionality. The identification methods of the harmony of the typographic set have been offered: rhythm metrics, dimensional copying of the mirror image, stylistic harmony of subject combinations. Quantitative parameters of proportional ratios of areas of assortment units do not contradict the proportions of control measurements of design dimensions. The proposed technique can be recommended as a basic one in the development of a capsule wardrobe and in determining the items harmony.

Exploring the speech rhythm continuum

In current speech rhythm research, the traditional search for isochrony and speech rhythm classes has been replaced with a focus on uncovering the acoustic correlates of rhythm in the speech signal (Ramus, Nespor, and Mehler 1999, Grabe and Low 2002, Cummins 2002). In this paper, I present findings from a study in which I describe speech rhythm in a language whose rhythm had not been previously studied—Ashanti Twi (Niger-Congo, Kwa). Additionally, I test the validity of claims made about the utility of various rhythm metrics. Two native speakers of Ashanti Twi participated in the study. Each speaker was recorded while reading a translation of “The North Wind and the Sun”. Vocalic and consonantal intervals were measured in Praat using auditory and visual cues. Various rhythm metrics (interval measurements and Pairwise Variability Indices) were then computed and compared to results from prior studies. Results show that Ashanti Twi is rhythmically more similar to languages that have been traditionally described as syllable-timed, such as French and Spanish. However, it does not fall clearly into the traditional stressor syllable-timed categories, supporting the claim that speech rhythm should be studied as a continuum rather than a categorical distinction.

Diurnal Rhythm Robustness in Individuals With PTSD and Insomnia and The Association With Sleep.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and insomnia are characterized by sleep disturbances and daytime functional impairments. Actigraphy metrics can quantify diurnal rhythms via interdaily stability, intradaily variability, relative amplitude, and sleep regularity. Here, we (a) compared diurnal rhythms in PTSD, insomnia, and healthy control samples using linear mixed modeling; (b) compared inter-individual variability of diurnal rhythms between groups using variance ratio tests; and (c) examined correlations between diurnal rhythms and sleep measures within the clinical samples. Participants (N = 98) wore wrist-activity monitors for one week and completed the Insomnia Severity Index and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Both clinical samples displayed significantly lower interdaily stability, relative amplitude, and sleep regularity compared with controls. Individuals with PTSD and insomnia did not differ on mean diurnal rhythm metrics. Both clinical samples showed more inter-individual variability in relative amplitude compared with controls, and the individuals with PTSD were distinguished from those with insomnia by greater inter-individual variability in interdaily stability and relative amplitude. Relative amplitude in the clinical samples was positively correlated with objective sleep efficiency and total sleep time. This is the first study to compare individuals with PTSD and insomnia on measures of diurnal rhythms, revealing those with PTSD and insomnia to have less robust and more variable diurnal rhythms compared with controls. Individuals with PTSD differed from those with insomnia in inter-individual variability of diurnal rest-activity stability and amplitude, highlighting this population as particularly heterogenous. Diurnal rhythm robustness might be considered an intervention target in insomnia and PTSD populations.

Le metriche ritmiche applicate allo studio del parlato bilingue. Stato dell’arte e implicazioni per possibili studi nell’Alpe Adria

While the rhythm of natural languages has been extensively studied, also by calculating the rhythm metrics, the acquisition of rhythm in (early) simultaneous bilingual speakers is a field of research that remains under-investigated. This article critically assesses the most important recent studies on the rhythm of bilingual speakers and offers reflections on their application in future research, exemplarily applied to the Alps-Adriatic region.

The Setswana speech rhythm of 6–7 year-old Setswana–English bilingual children

Aims and objectives: This study investigates the acquisition of Setswana speech rhythm, considered to be typically syllable-timed, by early sequential Setswana–English bilingual children aged 6–7 years old growing up in Botswana, a country with a diglossic setting, where English is the dominant high-status language in educational and public contexts. For this group of children, taught full-time in English from the age of 3 years, the L2 becomes their dominant language through exposure to English-medium education. The aim was to ascertain if the prosodic patterns of Setswana spoken by the bilingual children are similar to those of the monolingual children or if English, considered to be stress-timed, has an effect on these prosodic features. Data and analysis: The speech rhythm patterns of 10 Setswana–English bilingual children were compared with those of 10 age-matched Setswana monolingual children educated in public schools for whom English is a learner language. The study primarily examines spontaneous speech from the telling of a wordless picture storybook, and utilises rhythm metrics nPVI-V and Varco V to examine the speech rhythm of the children. Findings: The results showed that the prosodic pattern of Setswana in the bilingual group diverged from that of the non-bilingual group. Originality: This is the first such study on speech rhythm in bilingual children in Setswana. Significance: The research provides evidence in this population of effects from English bilingualism on L1 Setswana speech prosody, and challenges the assumption that speech rhythm prosody is established early in life, especially when the language is a less marked, syllable-timed language like Setswana.

Preventing Cardiovascular Disease Among Urban African Americans With a Mobile Health App (the MOYO App): Protocol for a Usability Study.

BackgroundCardiovascular disease (CVD) disparities are a particularly devastating manifestation of health inequity. Despite advancements in prevention and treatment, CVD is still the leading cause of death in the United States. Additionally, research indicates that African American (AA) and other ethnic-minority populations are affected by CVD at earlier ages than white Americans. Given that AAs are the fastest-growing population of smartphone owners and users, mobile health (mHealth) technologies offer the unparalleled potential to prevent or improve self-management of chronic disease among this population.ObjectiveTo address the unmet need for culturally tailored primordial prevention CVD–focused mHealth interventions, the MOYO app was cocreated with the involvement of young people from this priority community. The overall project aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a novel smartphone app designed to reduce CVD risk factors among urban-AAs, 18-29 years of age.MethodsThe theoretical underpinning will combine the principles of community-based participatory research and the agile software development framework. The primary outcome goals of the study will be to determine the usability, acceptability, and functionality of the MOYO app, and to build a cloud-based data collection infrastructure suitable for digital epidemiology in a disparity population. Changes in health-related parameters over a 24-week period as determined by both passive (eg, physical activity levels, sleep duration, social networking) and active (eg, use of mood measures, surveys, uploading pictures of meals and blood pressure readings) measures will be the secondary outcome. Participants will be recruited from a majority AA “large city” school district, 2 historically black colleges or universities, and 1 urban undergraduate college. Following baseline screening for inclusion (administered in person), participants will receive the beta version of the MOYO app. Participants will be monitored during a 24-week pilot period. Analyses of varying data including social network dynamics, standard metrics of activity, percentage of time away from a given radius of home, circadian rhythm metrics, and proxies for sleep will be performed. Together with external variables (eg, weather, pollution, and socioeconomic indicators such as food access), these metrics will be used to train machine-learning frameworks to regress them on the self-reported quality of life indicators.ResultsThis 5-year study (2015-2020) is currently in the implementation phase. We believe that MOYO can build upon findings of classical epidemiology and longitudinal studies like the Jackson Heart Study by adding greater granularity to our knowledge of the exposures and behaviors that affect health and disease, and creating a channel for outreach capable of launching interventions, clinical trials, and enhancements of health literacy.ConclusionsThe results of this pilot will provide valuable information about community cocreation of mHealth programs, efficacious design features, and essential infrastructure for digital epidemiology among young AA adults.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/16699

Rhythm and speech rate as a diagnostic aid in neurodegenerative syndromes of the front-temporal lobes

Temporal variables have proven to be an effective tool to characterize speech in neurodegenerative diseases and primary progressive aphasia variants, but the evidence available so far is essentially limited to English. This article analyses, by means of a small sample of seven patient groups and a control group (total n = 34; control group = 6; progressive primary aphasia, en three variants = 15; fronto-temporal dementia in two variants = 9; supranuclear progressive palsy = 3; cortico-basal syndrome = 2), the temporal parameters of speech rate, vowel duration, consonant duration, and nine rhythmic metrics (%V, %C, ΔV, ΔC, VarcoV, VarcoC, rPVI-V, rPVI-C, nPVI-V). The results indicate that speech rate is slower in patients with primary progressive non-fluent aphasia (APPnf), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or corticobasal syndrome (CBS) than in controls. These three clinical groups, as well as those suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), have longer segmental durations, especially in consonants. Among the rhythm metrics, %C, ΔV and rPVI-C also allow to differentiate between groups, specifically, between control and APPlog, ELA-DFT y SCB.

Discourse Prosody in Children's Rhyme Speech Produced by Prelingually Deaf Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose This study aimed to obtain a comprehensive understanding about how Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) performed speech prosody in a connected discourse and to what extent their prosodic scenario differed from those normal-hearing (NH) peers. Method Fifteen prelingually deaf Mandarin-speaking children with unilateral multichannel CIs were chosen and 15 age-matched NH controls were recruited. Speech samples were spontaneously elicited by children's rhyme speech genre and subject to phonetic annotation. Acoustic analysis was conducted on all speech samples, mainly focusing on the measurements of duration and fundamental frequency (F0). Tempo measures included temporal fluency, syllable-lengthening, and rhythm metrics, whereas melodic measures included both local and global F0 variations under different prosodic domains. Results The CI children generally achieved compatible temporal performance with the NH children in spontaneous discourse, except that they were somewhat arbitrary when operationalizing lengthening strategy and pausing strategy at different prosodic boundaries. With regard to melodic performance, CI children may not sufficiently modulate local phonetic nuances of F0 variation, and meanwhile, they performed atypically in the global F0 declination pattern and overall F0 resetting pattern, failing to signal the specific structure of children's rhyme discourse. Early age at implantation and longer CI experience did not play a significant role in the temporal performance of the CI children but did facilitate their articulation of dynamic pitch variation in the spontaneous discourse to some extent. Conclusion CI children did exhibit atypical prosodic patterns in discourse context, especially the overall mapping between the prosodic manifestation and the discourse structure.

Automatic Language Identification Using Speech Rhythm Features for Multi-Lingual Speech Recognition

The conventional speech recognition systems can handle the input speech of a specific single language. To realize multi-lingual speech recognition, a language should be firstly identified from input speech. This study proposes an efficient Language IDentification (LID) approach for the multi-lingual system. The standard LID tasks depend on common acoustic features used in speech recognition. However, the features may convey insufficient language-specific information, as they aim to discriminate the general tendency of phonemic information. This study investigates another type of feature characterizing language-specific properties, considering computation complexity. We focus on speech rhythm features providing the prosodic characteristics of speech signals. The rhythm features represent the tendency of consonants and vowels of languages, and therefore, classifying them from speech signals is necessary. For the rapid classification, we employ Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM)-based learning in which two GMMs corresponding to consonants and vowels are firstly trained and used for classifying them. By using the classification results, we estimate the tendency of two phonemic groups such as the duration of consonantal and vocalic intervals and calculate rhythm metrics called R-vector. In experiments on several speech corpora, the automatically extracted R-vector provided similar language tendencies to the conventional studies on linguistics. In addition, the proposed R-vector-based LID approach demonstrated superior or comparable LID performance to the conventional approaches in spite of low computation complexity.

How do stress, sleep quality, and chronotype associate with clinically significant depressive symptoms? A study of young male military recruits in compulsory service.

Objective:Although studies have shown an association between poor sleep and chronotype with psychiatric problems in young adults, few have focused on identifying multiple concomitant risk factors.Methods:We assessed depressive symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory [BDI]), circadian typology (Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire [MEQ]), sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]), perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale [PSS]), social rhythm (Social Rhythm Metrics [SRM]), and salivary cortisol (morning, evening and night, n=37) in 236 men (all 18 years old). Separate analyses were conducted to understand how each PSQI domain was associated with depressive symptoms.Results:Depressive symptoms were more prevalent in individuals with higher perceived stress (prevalence ratio [PR] = 6.429, p < 0.001), evening types (PR = 2.58, p < 0.001) and poor sleepers (PR = 1.808, p = 0.046). Multivariate modeling showed that these three variables were independently associated with depressive symptoms (all p < 0.05). The PSQI items subjective sleep quality and sleep disturbances were significantly more prevalent in individuals with depressive symptoms (PR = 2.210, p = 0.009 and PR = 2.198, p = 0.008). Lower levels of morning cortisol were significantly associated with higher depressive scores (r = -0.335; p = 0.043).Conclusion:It is important to evaluate multiple factors related to sleep and chronotype in youth depression studies, since this can provide important tools for comprehending and managing mental health problems.

언어 리듬에 대한 통계적 접근법

This paper reviews approaches to speech rhythm which is defined as patterned recurrences of events in time. The paper provides a bird eyes’ review that earlier failed attempts to rhythm metrics which have been devoted to finding periodicity led to the conceptual shift that speech is not isochronous and that the rhythm of a language is the product of its linguistic structure such as syllable structure, vowel reduction, and accent-induced lengthening. It is also summarized that quantitative and stochastic approaches to linguistic rhythm has been accompanied by the conceptual shift, and that various rhythmic metrics such C, %V, and Δ PVI are proposed. The paper ends with the suggestions that much endeavor needs to be made in order to find rhythmic constancy by including wider phonetic features such as locating rhythmic domains, finding an automatized way of locating stress or accents in the stretch of speech signals, and including pitch, intensity, and spectral features as well as the consonantal and vocalic durations.

The realization of English rhythm by Busan Korean speakers*

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the realization of speech rhythm in English as spoken by Korean learners of English. The study particularly aims to examine the rhythm metrics of English read speech by learners who speak Busan or the South Kyungsang dialect of Korean. Twenty-four learners whose L1 is Busan Korean and eight native speakers of English read a passage wherein five sentences were segmented and labeled as vocalic and intervocalic intervals. Various rhythm metrics such as %V, Varcos, and Pairwise Variability Indexes (PVIs) were calculated. The results show that Korean learners read English sentences with significantly more vocalic and consonantal intervals at a slower speech rate than native English speakers. The analyses of rhythm metrics revealed that when the speech rate was not normalized, Korean learners’ English showed more variability in the length of consonantal and vocalic intervals. However, speech-rate-normalized rhythm metrics for vocalic intervals indicated that Korean learners transferred their L1 rhythmic structures (a syllable-timed language) into their L2 speech (a stress-timed language). Overall, the results suggest that Korean learners’ English reflects the rhythmic characteristics of their L1. The effect of the learners’ L1 dialect on the realization of L2 speech rhythm is also speculated.

Acquisition of English speech rhythm by Chinese learners of English at different English proficiency levels*

This study aims to investigate the rhythmic patterns in the English speech produced by Chinese learners of English who learn English as a foreign language (EFL learners). Utilizing interval-based rhythm metrics, namely, VarcoC, VarcoV, nPVI-C, nPVI-V, and %V, the study compared the rhythmic differences in English speech between ten native speakers from the United States and forty Chinese EFL learners from mainland China. A sentence elicitation task consisting of thirty picture prompts and corresponding thirty stimuli sentences with at least five vocalic and four consonantal intervals was conducted. Statistical results reveal that both Chinese advanced learners and beginners had significantly lower degree of stress-timed in their English speech, indicating that the acquisition of the L2 speech rhythm was influenced by the learners’ L1 rhythmic pattern. In addition, the results also show that the Chinese advanced learners had significantly higher degree of stress-timed in their English speech than beginners and showed no significant difference with native speakers in VarcoC and nPVI-C. These results indicate that the direction of L2 speech rhythm development was from more syllable-timed to more stress-timed.