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

to hearers. If hearers perceive these feet to have the same duration then this would be some indication that the stress-timing hypothesis has some validity; and the corollary of this would be that if they perceive them to be different in length, then this would be evidence against the stress-timing hypothesis. We will return to the issue of perception in Section 7. 5.3 'Strong Tendency' The quotation from Jones (1918) cited above mentioned the 'strong tendency' for stress-timing to occur. The theme of the 'strong tendency' has been continued by succeeding generations of scholars, of whom Halliday is one: In natural speech, the tempo is not as regular as in counting or in children's rhymes. Nevertheless there is a strong tendency in English for the salient syllables to occur at regular intervals; speakers of English like their feet to be all roughly the same length. (1994, p. 293) The problem with the term 'strong tendency' is that makes it possible for scholars to dismiss any counter-evidence by stating 'I only said it was a tendency'. Because 'strong tendency' is unquantifiable, it is impossible to prove or refute this statement. This is therefore a hypothesis which for Halliday and others has become a matter of belief masquerading as a scientific statement. 6 Measuring duration of syllables Roach (1982) sets out to test (amongst other things) the statement by Abercrombie that: (i) 'there is considerable variation in syllable length in a language spoken with stress-timed rhythm whereas in a language spoken with a syllable-timed rhythm the syllables tend to be equal in length' (Abercrombie, 1967, p. 98) Roach measured duration of syllables in three syllable-timed languages (French, Telugu, and Yoruba) and three stress-timed languages (English, Russian and Arabic). Samples of spontaneous unscripted speech from six speakers, one for each language, were recorded and analysed. 41 I