Isochrony

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[1] (or, in some analyses, a third category: mora-timed languages).[2] However, empirical studies have been unable to directly or fully support the hypothesis, so the concept remains controversial in linguistics.[3][1][4]

  1. ^ a b Aubanel, Vincent; Schwartz, Jean-Luc (2020). "The role of isochrony in speech perception in noise". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 19580. Bibcode:2020NatSR..1019580A. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-76594-1. PMC 7658253. PMID 33177590.
  2. ^ Cummins, Fred (2015). "Rhythm and speech". The handbook of speech production, 158-177.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Liberman was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cummins, 2015, p. 162.