INTERSPEECH 2004 - ICSLP 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing Jeju Island, Korea October 4-8, 2004

An Acoustic Study of Speech Rhythm in Taiwan English

Hua-Li Jian

National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

American English and Taiwan English have been found to exhibit different rhythmic patterns. American English is often described as a stress-timed language, while it has been suggested that Taiwan English is a syllable-timed language. This paper addresses the differences between these two varieties of English through an acoustic study. In particular the F1/F2 formant space is investigated. The results show that reduced vowels in American English are more concentrated in the F1/F2 formant space than reduced vowels in Taiwan English, which are more dispersed.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Jian, Hua-Li (2004): "An acoustic study of speech rhythm in taiwan English", In INTERSPEECH-2004, 1265-1268.