Phonetics and Phonology (ENG)
VU Lesson-30 SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES-II At the end of this section, the students will be able to • Define syllable-timed and stress-timed languages.
Topic-152: Stress Timed Languages It is sometimes claimed by the experts that different languages (and dialects) have different types of rhythmic patterns. Languages
of the world are therefore, divided into two broad categories stress timed language and syllable timed languages. But this is basically the division of languages on the basis of their modes of timing (i.e., stress vs. syllable timed languages. Stress timed languages have stress as their dominating rhythmic feature meaning that these languages seem to be timed according to the stressed patterns (the division among the syllables is made on the basis of stressed and unstressed patterns e.g., English and German languages. In other words,
in stress timed languages, stressed syllables occur with regular intervals and their units of timing are perceived accordingly. Stress-timed rhythm is one of these rhythmical types, and is said to be characterized by a tendency for stressed syllables to occur at equal intervals of time. This idea is further clarified in the next topic.
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