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

that the use of such drills 'has helped to make us see English accentual rhythm as more regular than it really is' (p. 48). 9 Why anisochrony is essential It is possible that a lack of a single regular rhythm is in fact essential, in other words there might be a reason why purpose-driven spontaneous speech is not stress-timed. Rhythm in speech is fleeting and ever-changing: short stretches of up to four tone units appear rhythmical, they are followed by moments of irrhythmicality, and then another rhythm may establish itself briefly again before irrhythmicality or a rhythm change occurs once again. If this did not happen, a speaker might find it difficult to hold the attention of the hearer: the hearer instead of attending to selections of meaning would be distracted - by the pattern of an established rhythm - from attending to the communication of meanings which is the purpose of most speech. The non-occurrence of a continued rhythm of any sort could therefore be viewed as a necessary feature of any co-operative purpose-driven speech: what matters are the selections of meaning which a speaker makes through the placement of prominences. 10 Conclusion I mentioned earlier that if we abandon the notion that English is stress-timed in favour of one that recognises that English is speakertimed one has to account for three common observations: (a) differences in rhythm between languages reported by language learners; (b) short natural-sounding samples have stress-timing; (c) the value teachers' place on stress-timing exercises. As far differences between languages are concerned one need do no more than quote Dauer (1983), who argues that a theory of 'stress-timing/syllable-timing' is not required to explain such perceptions. She proposes that 'rhythmic differences we feel to exist between languages...are more a result of phonological, phonetic, lexical and syntactic facts about that language than any attempt on the part of the speaker to equalize interstress or intersyllabic intervals' (1983, p. 55). Dauer suggests that it is phenomena such as syllable structure, word-accent, and vowel reduction which are the 46