Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Richard Cauldwell: Stress-timing: observations, beliefs, and evidence

of this schizophrenia, and I want also to suggest a way of resolving the discrepancy between beliefs and evidence. 2 Stress-timing and syllabic timing Stress-timing (or isochrony) is said to be a characteristic of languages such as English, Russian, and Arabic. It is said that the stresses occur at equal intervals of time, and that as a consequence, syllables vary in length in order to allow stresses to occur at roughly equal intervals of time. In the following example (from Halliday, 1994, p. 293) the syllables after the slash symbols '/' (a foot boundary) are the salient syllables which occur at regular intervals of time: /James / James / said to his / mother / 'Mother,' he / said, said / he The idea is that the first syllables of each foot occur at equal intervals of time. This would result in the syllables in the the third foot (said to his), fifth foot (.Mother he), and sixth foot (said said), being shorter than if the words were to occur on their own. Thus the two syllables of mother in the fifth foot are shorter than their counterparts in the fourth foot to allow space for the word he to be spoken 'in time' before the salient syllable said. Thus, it is argued, syllable length varies to allow stresses to occur at 'roughly' equal intervals. The issue of how 'roughly equal' the intervals can be will be explored below (cf. 5.3). Syllable-timing is said to be characteristic of languages such as French, Hungarian, and Japanese. It is argued first that syllables do not vary in length; and second that the intervals between stresses vary in order to preserve the constant length of syllables. Take for example the fourteen underlined syllables of the portion from a feminist speech: Le feminisme est une doctrine philosophique basée sur l'égalité de tous les étres humains et qui a pour but d'établir l'égalité des sexes dans tous les domaines: civile, politique, intellectuel, économique et social. (Verone, 1992) 34