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

continue the tradition of believing in stress-timing. Pike for example (1945, p. 35) distinguishes between stress and syllable timed languages and Abercrombie (1967) asserted that all languages can be categorised as being either stress or syllable-timed: As far as is known, every language in the world is spoken with one kind of rhythm or with the other. In ...syllable-timed rhythm ...the chest-pulses, and hence the syllables recur at equal intervals of time-they are isochronous. In.

. .stress-timed rhythm.

. .the stress pulses, and hence the stressed syllables, are isochronous.(Abercrombie, 1967, p. 97). [Italics are Abercrombie's] Abercrombie's implies that the rhythm of speech has physical origins - he mentions 'chest-pulses' and 'stress pulses'. We should note with Dauer (1983) that the hypothesis concerning a link between speech rhythm and physical movements such as chest pulses has been refuted by Ladefoged (1967). However, much scholarly writing on the rhythm of English continues to associate speech rhythm with observable physical movements. Brown (1990) states If you watch an English speaker talking you will be able to see, without hearing what he is saying, where the stressed syllables are..

. .there is a tendency for a rhythm to be established in speech.

. .These beats will coincide with other muscular beats of the body. (pp. 43-44) She then goes on to assert that stressed syllables 'will tend to occur at roughly equal intervals of time', but only under ideal conditions: 'Thus, in general, prose read aloud by a fluent reader has a much more obvious rhythm than conversational speech which may be full of pauses and false starts. Very fluent speakers, who can organize their thoughts well in advance of actually uttering them, also establish a far more obvious rhythm than those who have to search for the right word and keep trying to refine a thought while , in the middle of expressing it' (p. 44). Notice here that she is prioritising a formal speech style (prose read aloud), and (implicitly) denigrating the most common speech style spontaneous, real-time, purpose-driven speech in which 38