Traditionally the rhythmic alternations between stress and non-stress are described by the terms "stress-timing" and "syllable-timing". Frequently authors have proceeded under the assumption that every language possesses an intrinsic timing pattern which is responsible for segment duration, phonetic reduction, and stress assignment. There is little evidence to suggest that these timing patterns serve as a catalyst to phonetic alternations. There do exist, however, other factors uhich inherently affect segment duration and speech rhythm. For example, there are neuromuscular constraints (e.g., the speed of nerve impulses, the mass of the various articulators), articulatory factors (e.g., the inherent differences in the duration of stops, nasals, fricatives, as well as the effect of vowel height and voicing), sentence-level shortening processes (e.g., prepausal lengthening), and semantic constraints (e.g., emphasis). This paper compares phonetic reduction processes between Spanish (a syllable-timed language) and Brazilian Portuguese (a stress-timed language). An analysis of their respective vowel reductions, spirant ization, and reduction of heterosyllabic consonant clusters exemplify how an investigation of their phonetic patterns better explains the disparate rhythm tendencies than does the implementation of the terms stress-timing and syllable-timing.
Cite as: Kelm, O.R. (1991) Intrinsic difficulties with the terms 'stress-timing' and 'syllable-timing' for Spanish and Portuguese. Proc. ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles, paper 034
@inproceedings{kelm91_ppst,
author={Orlando R. Kelm},
title={{Intrinsic difficulties with the terms 'stress-timing' and 'syllable-timing' for Spanish and Portuguese}},
year=1991,
booktitle={Proc. ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles},
pages={paper 034}
}