Re: stress-timed vs. syllable-timed languages

On Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:29:37 -1000, Bart Mathias <mathias@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
There is a notion floating around the semi-popular literature that
languages can be categorized as "stress-timed" or "syllable-timed".

What's the expert thinking on that distinction these days?

I wish I weren't already too demented to remember the name of the
University of Hawaii student (East Asian Languages instead of
Linguistics, though) who did work in that neighborhood 10 or 15 years ago.

She did what seemed to me a really fine job contrasting the
mora-counting language Japanese with Korean as syllable-counting as well
as English for stress-counting.


A man crossing the street near the Hawaii State Library the other day
was saying to his mother, "They put INK you know inside I think." This
was clearly English. The word order (if a little unusual), the choice
of words, and their pronunciation all made that clear.

But two things marked this as an English influenced by Pidgin (Hawaii
Creole English). The first was the tone pattern, higher on INK for
stress as expected, but low and even on every syllable following it.
The second was strict syllable timing. I concluded after listening to
him that English can be syllable timed, but it makes it sound
different.

I think it works the other way around, too, or at least HCE phrases
incorporated into English with stress timing sound strange. I
remember asking a customer service worker in a grocery store for an
escort to get outside past a stranger who had some grievance with me.
A grievance? "She complained that I went stick finger," I explained,
"but I never." I got the escort.
.

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