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
hearers can perceive isochronous chains at more than one level at the same time: notice that the four chains 10-13 all overlap with chain 09, and that chains 12 and 13 (both at the phrase level) share a 'stress' on Dick. A Discourse Intonation (Brazil, 1985, 1994) transcription of the recording that Couper-Kuhlen used is given below: 01 PRIvately 02 i aGREE enTlREly WITH you 03 but WHEN you've been DICK 04 as LONG as \ have 05 because your FAmily STAR ted it 06 ...there's... 07 NO point in ARguing really Note: Upper case letters indicate prominent syllables, underlined upper case syllables indicate the location of the tone. Tone choice itself, and Key and Termination are not indicated in this transcription. This is a transcription that attends to meaning, rather than to rhythm. Note that Couper-Kuhlen's isochronous chain stops half way through tone unit 5: after the onset prominence family and before the word started. This is a curious place to end a chain because the tonic prominence on started represents an important selection of meaning, and is likely to figure strongly in any hearer's perceptions. It is now clcar that a major failing of this type of analysis is that it attends to the form of an utterance and ignores those features of speech (selections of meaning) on which the attention of speakers and hearers is most likely to be focused, and which are most likely to colour any perceptions they might have of rhythm. Couper-Kuhlen's conclusion begins by acknowledging that her findings are largely against the stress-timing hypothesis: ...the passage is not uniformly isochronous throughout. In this sense, those who have been skeptical of finding isochrony in performance are right: English speech is not uniformly isochronous over extended periods of time. (p. 48 her italics) but then comes the lifeline: But just as significantly, the passage is not wholly anisochronous either. In fact, allowing for discontinuities, a large portion of it is isochronous in one way or another (p. 48 her italics) 44
