Article published In:
English World-WideVol. 27:3 (2006) ► pp.331–355
Prosodic rhythm and African American English
Prosodic rhythm was measured for a sample of 20 African American and 20 European American speakers from North Carolina using the metric devised by Low, Grabe and Nolan (2000), which involves comparisons of the durations of vowels in adjacent syllables. In order to gain historical perspective, the same technique was applied to the ex-slave recordings described in Bailey, Maynor and Cukor-Avila (1991) and to recordings of five Southern European Americans born before the Civil War. In addition, Jamaicans, Hispanics of Mexican origin who spoke English as their L2, and Hispanics speaking Spanish served as control groups. Results showed that the North Carolina African Americans and European Americans were both quite stress-timed overall, with no significant difference between them. Spanish emerged as solidly syllable-timed, while Jamaican English and Hispanic English were intermediate. The ex-slaves were significantly less stress-timed than either younger African Americans or European Americans born before the Civil War. This finding suggests that African American English was once similar to Jamaican English in prosodic rhythm.
Cited by
Cited by 61 other publications
Armstrong, Meghan, Mara Breen, Shelome Gooden, Erez Levon & Kristine M. Yu
2022. Sociolectal and Dialectal Variation in Prosody. Language and Speech 65:4 ► pp. 783 ff. 
Basilakos, Alexandra, Grigori Yourganov, Dirk-Bart den Ouden, Daniel Fogerty, Chris Rorden, Lynda Feenaughty & Julius Fridriksson
2017. A Multivariate Analytic Approach to the Differential Diagnosis of Apraxia of Speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 60:12 ► pp. 3378 ff.
Carter, Phillip M., Lydda López Valdez & Nandi Sims
2020. New Dialect Formation Through Language Contact. American Speech 95:2 ► pp. 119 ff.
Carter, Phillip M. & Tonya Wolford
2016. Cross-generational prosodic convergence in South Texas Spanish. Spanish in Context 13:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
Clopper, Cynthia G. & Rajka Smiljanic
2015. Regional variation in temporal organization in American English. Journal of Phonetics 49 ► pp. 1 ff.
Coats, Steven
2020. Articulation Rate in American English in a Corpus of YouTube Videos. Language and Speech 63:4 ► pp. 799 ff.
Esposito, Lewis
2020. Linking gender, sexuality, and affect: The linguistic and social patterning of phrase-final posttonic lengthening. Language Variation and Change 32:2 ► pp. 191 ff.
FAGYAL, ZSUZSANNA & EIVIND TORGERSEN
2018. Prosodic rhythm, cultural background, and interaction in adolescent urban vernaculars in Paris: case studies and comparisons. Journal of French Language Studies 28:2 ► pp. 165 ff.
Farrington, Charlie, Sharese King & Mary Kohn
2021. Sources of variation in the speech of African Americans: Perspectives from sociophonetics. WIREs Cognitive Science 12:3
Fine, Julia Coombs
2019. ‘They just had such a sweet way of speaking’: Constructed voices and prosodic styles in Kodiak Alutiiq. Language & Communication 67 ► pp. 1 ff.
Foulkes, Paul
2020. Phonological Variation. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ► pp. 407 ff.
Fox, Sue & Eivind Torgersen
2018. Language Change and Innovation in London: Multicultural London English. In Sociolinguistics in England, ► pp. 189 ff.
Fridland, Valerie & Tyler Kendall
2023. 10. Variation in Phonetics and Phonology. Publication of the American Dialect Society 108:1 ► pp. 184 ff.
Fuchs, Robert
2016. Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English. In Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English [Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics, ], ► pp. 87 ff.
Gilbers, Steven, Nienke Hoeksema, Kees de Bot & Wander Lowie
2020. Regional Variation in West and East Coast African-American English Prosody and Rap Flows. Language and Speech 63:4 ► pp. 713 ff.
Henriksen, Nicholas & Stephen Fafulas
2017. Prosodic timing and language contact: Spanish and Yagua in Amazonian Peru. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 10:2 ► pp. 225 ff.
Holt, Yolanda Feimster & Balaji Rangarathnam
2018. F0 declination and reset in read speech of African American and White American women. Speech Communication 97 ► pp. 43 ff.
Jue, Yu & Dafydd Gibbon
2012. 2012 International Conference on Speech Database and Assessments, ► pp. 41 ff.
Kallio, Heini, Maria Kautonen & Mikko Kuronen
2023. Prosody and fluency of Finland Swedish as a second language: Investigating global parameters for automated speaking assessment. Speech Communication 148 ► pp. 66 ff.
Kaminskaïa, Svetlana
2018. Exploring sociolinguistic discontinuity in a minority variety of French. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 13 [Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, 13], ► pp. 159 ff.
KAMINSKAÏA, SVETLANA, JEFF TENNANT & ALEXANDER RUSSELL
2016. Prosodic Rhythm in Ontario French. Journal of French Language Studies 26:2 ► pp. 183 ff.
King, Sharese
2020. From African American Vernacular English to African American Language: Rethinking the Study of Race and Language in African Americans’ Speech. Annual Review of Linguistics 6:1 ► pp. 285 ff.
KNOOIHUIZEN, REMCO
2019. Accuracy and acceptability of second-dialect performance on American television. English Language and Linguistics 23:2 ► pp. 229 ff.
Laturnus, Rebecca
2020. Comparative Acoustic Analyses of L2 English: The Search for Systematic Variation. Phonetica 77:6 ► pp. 441 ff.
Li, Aini, Ruaridh Purse & Nicole Holliday
2022. Variation in global and intonational pitch settings among black and white speakers of Southern American English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 152:5 ► pp. 2617 ff.
Low, Ee‐Ling
2015. The Rhythmic Patterning of English(es). In The Handbook of English Pronunciation, ► pp. 125 ff.
McLarty, Jason
2018. African American Language and European American English Intonation Variation Over Time in The American South. American Speech 93:1 ► pp. 32 ff.
Michnowicz, Jim & Alex Hyler
2020. Chapter 5. The acento pujado in Yucatan Spanish. In Hispanic Contact Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 22], ► pp. 116 ff.
Myrick, Caroline
2014. Putting Saban English on the map. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 35:2 ► pp. 161 ff.
Naranjo Sánchez, Beatriz
2015. Translating blackness in Spanish dubbing. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics 28:2 ► pp. 416 ff.
Newman, Michael
2010. Focusing, implicational scaling, and the dialect status of New York Latino English1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14:2 ► pp. 207 ff.
Newman, Michael & Angela Wu
2011. “DO YOU SOUND ASIAN WHEN YOU SPEAK English?” RACIAL IDENTIFICATION AND VOICE IN CHINESE AND KOREAN Americans' ENGLISH. American Speech 86:2 ► pp. 152 ff.
Nycz, Jennifer
2020. English Phonetics. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ► pp. 323 ff.
Rao, Rajiv & Rebecca Ronquest
2015. The heritage Spanish phonetic/phonological system: Looking back and moving forward. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 8:2 ► pp. 403 ff.
Ronquest, Rebecca E., Jim Michnowicz, Eric Wilbanks & Claudia Cortes
2020. Examining the (mini-) variable swarm in the Spanish of the Southeast. In Hispanic Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 26], ► pp. 304 ff.
Sims, Nandi
2023. The English Prosodic Rhythm of African- and Haitian-Americans in South Florida. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage
Sung, Chit Cheung Matthew
2015. Hong Kong English: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Language and Linguistics Compass 9:6 ► pp. 256 ff.
Sung-A Kim
2016. Quantitative Approach to L2 Rhythm: With Specific References to Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese Learners of English. Studies in Linguistics null:39 ► pp. 49 ff.
Sönning, Lukas
2023. (Re-)viewing the Acquisition of Rhythm in the Light of L2 Phonological Theories. In Speech Rhythm in Learner and Second Language Varieties of English [Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics, ], ► pp. 123 ff.
Terry, J. Michael & Lisa J. Green
2023. 2. African American English. Publication of the American Dialect Society 108:1 ► pp. 26 ff.
Thomas, Erik R.
2007. Phonological and Phonetic Characteristics of African American Vernacular English. Language and Linguistics Compass 1:5 ► pp. 450 ff.
Thomas, Erik R.
2013. Sociophonetics. In The Handbook of Language Variation and Change, ► pp. 108 ff.
Thomas, Erik R.
2017. Analysis of the Ex-Slave Recordings. In Listening to the Past, ► pp. 350 ff.
Erik R. Thomas
2019. Mexican American English,
Thomas, Erik R.
2020. Sociophonetic trends in studies of Southern U.S. English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 147:1 ► pp. 529 ff.
TOD, DANIELLE
2024. Rhythm in the Kingdom: a variationist analysis of speech rhythm in Tongan English. English Language and Linguistics ► pp. 1 ff.
Torgersen, Eivind Nessa & Anita Szakay
2012. An investigation of speech rhythm in London English. Lingua 122:7 ► pp. 822 ff.
van Hofwegen, Janneke
2010. Apparent-time evolution of /l/ in one African American community. Language Variation and Change 22:3 ► pp. 373 ff.
van Niekerk, Benjamin, Marc-André Carbonneau & Herman Kamper
2023. Rhythm Modeling for Voice Conversion. IEEE Signal Processing Letters 30 ► pp. 1297 ff.
Washington, Julie A., Bryan K. Murray & Elizabeth Doyne
2024. Chapter 3. Pitfalls and promises of dialect in the classroom. In Multifaceted Multilingualism [Studies in Bilingualism, 66], ► pp. 47 ff.
Weldon, Tracey L.
2022. Visibly invisible: The study of middle class African American English. Language and Linguistics Compass 16:11
Wolfram, Walt
2018. Changing Ethnolinguistic Perceptions In The South. American Speech 93:3-4 ► pp. 344 ff.
Wolfram, Walt, Caroline Myrick, Jon Forrest & Michael J. Fox
2016. The Significance of Linguistic Variation in the Speeches of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. American Speech 91:3 ► pp. 269 ff.
Yakpo, Kofi
2021. Creole Prosodic Systems Are Areal, Not Simple. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Young, Nathan J.
2022. The Sociolectal and Stylistic Variability of Rhythm in Stockholm. Language and Speech 65:4 ► pp. 1034 ff.
Young, Nathan J. & Michael McGarrah
2023. Forced alignment for Nordic languages: Rapidly constructing a high-quality prototype. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 46:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
Yu, Jue, Lu Zhang, Shengyi Wu & Beihua Zhang
2017. 2017 20th Conference of the Oriental Chapter of the International Coordinating Committee on Speech Databases and Speech I/O Systems and Assessment (O-COCOSDA), ► pp. 1 ff.
Zipp, Lena & Adina Staicov
2016. English in San Francisco Chinatown. In World Englishes [Varieties of English Around the World, G57], ► pp. 205 ff.
[no author supplied]
2013. Reference Guide for Varieties of English. In A Dictionary of Varieties of English, ► pp. 363 ff.
[no author supplied]
2021. Sociophonetics and Its Methods. In Sociophonetics, ► pp. 12 ff.
[no author supplied]
2023. References. In Sounds of English Worldwide, ► pp. 354 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.