English Speech Rhythm

English Speech Rhythm
Author: Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1993-04-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027285837

This monograph reconsiders the question of speech isochrony, the regular recurrence of (stressed) syllables in time, from an empirical point of view. It proposes a methodology for discovering isochrony auditorily in speech and for verifying it instrumentally in the acoustic laboratory. In a small-scale study of an English conversational extract, the gestalt-like rhythmic structures which isochrony creates are shown to have a hierarchical organization. Then in a large-scale study of a corpus of British and American radio phone-in programs and family table conversations, the function of speech rhythm at turn transitions is investigated. It is argued that speech rhythm serves as a metric for the timing of turn transitions in casual English conversation. The articular rhythmic configuration of a transition can be said to contextualize the next turn as, generally speaking, affiliative or disaffiliative with the prior turn. The empirical investigation suggests that speech rhythm patterns at turn transitions in everyday English conversation are not random occurrences or the result of a social-psychological adaptation process but are contextualization cues which figure systematically in the creation and interpretation of linguistic meaning in communication.

Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English

Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English
Author: Robert Fuchs
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2015-09-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3662478188

This book addresses the question whether Educated Indian English is more syllable-timed than British English from two standpoints: production and perception. Many post-colonial varieties of English, which are mostly spoken as a second language in countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines, are thought to have a syllable-timed rhythm, whereas first language varieties such as British English are characterized as being stress-timed. While previous studies mostly relied on a single acoustic correlate of speech rhythm, usually duration, the author proposes a multidimensional approach to the production of speech rhythm that takes into account various acoustic correlates. The results reveal that the two varieties differ with regard to a number of dimensions, such as duration, sonority, intensity, loudness, pitch and glottal stop insertion. The second part of the study addresses the question whether the difference in speech rhythm between Indian and British English is perceptually relevant, based on intelligibility and dialect discrimination experiments. The results reveal that speakers generally find the rhythm of their own variety more intelligible and that listeners can identify which variety a speaker is using on the basis of differences in speech rhythm.

Laboratory Phonology 7

Laboratory Phonology 7
Author: Carlos Gussenhoven
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 741
Release: 2008-08-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110197103

This collection of recent papers in Laboratory Phonology approaches phonological theory from several different empirical directions. Psycholinguistic research into the perception and production of speech has produced results that challenge current conceptions about phonological structure. Field work studies provide fresh insights into the structure of phonological features, and the phonology-phonetics interface is investigated in phonetic research involving both segments and prosody, while the role of underspecification is put to the test in automatic speech recognition.

English Speech Rhythm and the Foreign Learner

English Speech Rhythm and the Foreign Learner
Author: Corinne Adams
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1979
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9789027977168

No detailed description available for "English Speech Rhythm and the Foreign Learner".

The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody

The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody
Author: Carlos Gussenhoven
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 957
Release: 2021-01-07
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0198832230

This handbook presents detailed accounts of current research in all aspects of language prosody, written by leading experts from different disciplines. The volume's comprehensive coverage and multidisciplinary approach will make it an invaluable resource for all researchers, students, and practitioners interested in prosody.

Rhythm in Speech, Prose and Verse

Rhythm in Speech, Prose and Verse
Author: Jürgen Esser
Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3832528458

In contrast to other works, the linguistic approach to rhythm presented in this book does not start from decontextualized structures but from performance data in a bottom-up fashion. Drawing on Halliday's distinction between wording, writing, and sounding, the proposed model takes account of several levels of abstraction. Important categories for data analysis are syllable rhythm and accent rhythm, which interact to establish prominence patterns (peaks and valleys) that can be observed in spontaneous and prepared speech, readings and recitals. Excluding subjective factors of analysis, the new model offers a tool to describe the rhythmic potential of prose and verse and to evaluate rhythmic performances of reading and reciting.

The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences

The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences
Author: William J. Hardcastle
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Total Pages: 912
Release: 1999-03-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780631214786

Since Malmberg's classic Manual of Phonetics published in 1968 there has been no definitive up-to-date account of the phonetic sciences. The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences is unique in that it brings together, in the same volume, chapters on the biological foundations of speech and hearing such as brain functions underlying speech, organic variation of the vocal apparatus, auditory neural processing, articulatory processes together with chapters on theoretical and applied areas.