isochrony
Sign in to saveIsochrony is a linguistic analysis or hypothesis assuming that any spoken language's utterances are divisible into equal rhythmic portions of some kind. Under this assumption, languages are proposed to broadly fall into one of two categories based on rhythm or timing: syllable-timed or stress-timed languages (or, in some analyses, a third category: mora-timed languages). However, empirical studies have been unable to directly or fully support the hypothesis, so the concept remains controversial in linguistics. While isochrony may be a useful theoretical framework in some contexts, studies sugg
Article
10 sectionsContents
- History
- Alternative division of time
- Syllable timing
- Mora timing
- Stress timing
- Degrees of durational variability
- The stress-timing–syllable-timing distinction as a continuum
- See also
- References
- External links
Isochrony is a linguistic analysis or hypothesis assuming that any spoken language's utterances are divisible into equal rhythmic portions of some kind. Under this assumption, languages are proposed to broadly fall into one of two categories based on rhythm or timing: syllable-timed or stress-timed languages (or, in some analyses, a third category: mora-timed languages). However, empirical studies have been unable to directly or fully support the hypothesis, so the concept remains controversial in linguistics. While isochrony may be a useful theoretical framework in some contexts, studies suggest that, at best, syllable structure in natural speech has only a somewhat regular rhythm and perfectly regular speech may in fact be less intelligible.
== History == Rhythm is an aspect of prosody, others being intonation, stress, and tempo of speech. Isochrony refers to rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language. The idea was first expressed thus by Kenneth L. Pike in 1945, though the concept of language naturally occurring in chronologically and rhythmically equal measures is found at least as early as 1775 (in Prosodia Rationalis). Soames (1889) attributed the idea to Curwen. This has implications for linguistic typology: D. Abercrombie claimed "As far as is known, every language in the world is spoken with one kind of rhythm or with the other ... French, Telugu and Yoruba ... are syllable-timed languages ... English, Russian and Arabic ... are stress-timed languages."