Chapter 19
Timing properties of (Brazilian) Portuguese and (European) Spanish
Linguistic rhythmic or timing categories, usually defined in terms of isochrony, remain controversial as a meaningful typology for classifying languages, despite decades of research. Romance languages offer an opportunity to address this question since closely related languages are proposed to be at different ends of the typology. We test two such languages: European Spanish (ES) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Instead of investigating isochrony per se, however, we examine the interface between timing and prominence properties. Since duration is associated with prominence, we test the hypothesis that syllable-timed languages (ES) do not alter duration to express prominence, while non-syllable-timed languages (BP) do. Comparisons of lexical and sentential prominence effects on duration support our hypothesis, confirming the proposed distinction between the rhythmic classes of the two languages.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Rhythmic typology and the classification of European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
- 2.1Syllable- and stress-timing
- 2.2Rhythmic classification of European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
- 3.Experimental investigation of rhythm in European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
- 3.1Methodology
- 3.2Participants
- 3.3Procedure
- 3.4Stimuli
- 3.5Analyses
- 4.Results
- 4.1Binary logistic regression analysis (BLRA) results
- 4.2Duration
- 4.3Duration ratios
- 5.Discussion
- 5.1Manifestation of prominence in European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
- 5.2Measurements of relative duration
- 5.3Rhythm as duration manipulation
- 6.Conclusions
-
Notes
-
References
References
References
Arvaniti, Amalia
2009 “
Rhythm, Timing and the Timing of Rhythm.”
Phonetica 66 (1–2): 46–63.
Barbosa, Plínio
2000 “
‘Syllable-timing in Brazilian Portuguese’: uma crítica a Roy Major [“Syllable-timing in Brazilian Portuguese”: a critic to Roy Major].”
DELTA 16 (2): 369–402.
Cantoni, Maria Mendes
2013 “
O acento no Português Brasileiro: uma abordagem experimental [Stress in Brazilian Portuguese: An experimental approach].” Ph.D. dissertation, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Carrió i Font, Mar, and Antonio Ríos Mestre
1991 “
Compensatory Shortening in Spanish Spontaneous Speech.” In
Proceedings of the Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles, ed. by
Joaquim Llisterri, and
Delors Poch, 1–5. Barcelona: ESCA.
Dauer, Rebecca
1983 “
Stress-Timing and Syllable-Timing Reanalyzed.”
Journal of Phonetics 11: 51–62.
Dauer, Rebecca
1987 “
Phonetic and Phonological Components of Language Rhythm.” In
Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 447–450. Tallinn: Academy of Sciences of the Estonian S.S.R.
Delattre, Pierre
1965 Comparing the Phonetic Features of English, German, Spanish and French. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.
Delattre, Pierre
1966 Studies in French and Comparative Phonetics. The Hague: Mouton.
Dellwo, Volker
2006 “
Rhythm and Speech Rate: A Variation Coefficient for ∆C.” In
Proceedings of the 38th Linguistic Colloquium, Budapest, ed. by
Pawel Karnowski, and
Imre Szigeti, 231–241. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Frota, Sónia, and Pilar Prieto
(eds.) 2015 Intonation in Romance. New York: Oxford University Press.
Frota, Sónia, and Marina Vigário
2001 “
On the Correlates of Rhythmic Distinctions: The European/Brazilian Portuguese Case.”
Probus 13 (2): 247–275.
Grabe, Esther, and Ee Ling Low
2002 “
Durational Variability in Speech and the Rhythm Class Hypothesis.”
Papers in Laboratory Phonology 7: 515–546.
Hayes, Bruce
1995 Metrical Stress Theory: Principles and Case Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hoequist, Charles
1983a “
Durational Correlates of Linguistic Rhythm Categories.”
Phonetica 40 (1): 19–31.
Hoequist, Charles
1983b “
Syllable Duration in Stress-, Syllable- and Mora-Timed Languages.”
Phonetica 40 (3): 203–237.
Ladd, Robert
1996 Intonational Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lehiste, Ilse
1973 “
Rhythmic Units and Syntactic Units in Production and Perception.”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 54 (5): 1228–1234.
Lehiste, Ilse
1979 “
The Perception of Duration within Sequences of Four Intervals.”
Journal of Phonetics 7 (4): 313–316.
Llisterri, Joaquim, María Machuca, Carme de la Mota, Montserrat Riera, and Antonio Ríos
2003 “
The Perception of Lexical Stress in Spanish.” In
Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by
Maria-Josep Solé,
Daniel Recasens, and
Joaquín Romero, 2023–2026. Barcelona: Causal Productions.
Low, Ling Ee, Esther Grabe, and Francis Nolan
2000 “
Quantitative Characterizations of Speech Rhythm: Syllable-Timing in Singapore English.”
Language and Speech 43 (4): 377–401.
Major, Roy
1985 “
Stress and Rhythm in Brazilian Portuguese.”
Language 61 (2): 259–282.
Massini-Cagliari, Gladis
1992 Acento e ritmo [
Stress and rhythm]. São Paulo: Contexto.
Moraes, João Antônio de
1998 “
Intonation in Brazilian Portuguese.” In
Intonation systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, by
Daniel Hirst, and
Albert Di Cristo, 179–194. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Navarro Tomás, Tomás
1916 “
Cantidad de las vocales acentuadas [The quantity of stressed vowels].”
Revista de Filología Española III: 387–408.
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta
2006 “
Phonetic Cues to Stress and Accent in Spanish.” In
Selected Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, ed. by
Manuel Díaz-Campos, 104–118. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Ortega-Llebaria, Marta, and Pilar Prieto
2011 “
Acoustic Correlates of Stress in Central Catalan and Castilian Spanish.”
Language and Speech 54 (1): 1–25.
.
Parkinson, Stephen
1988 “
Portuguese.” In
The Romance Languages, ed. by
Martin Harris, and
Nigel Vincent, 131–169. New York: Routledge.
Pike, Kenneth
1972 [1945] “
The Intonation of American English.” In
Intonation, by
Dwight Le Merton Bolinger, 53–83. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Prieto, Pilar, Maria del Mar Vanrell, Lluïsa Astruc, Elinor Payne, and Brechtje Post
2012 “
Phonotactic and Phrasal Properties of Speech Rhythm. Evidence from Catalan, English, and Spanish.”
Speech Communication 54 (6): 681–702.
Ramus, Franck, Emmanuel Dupoux, and Jacques Mehler
2003 “
The Psychological Reality of Rhythm Classes: Perceptual Studies.” In
Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ed. by
Maria-Josep Solé,
Daniel Recasens, and
Joaquín Romero, 337–342. Barcelona: Causal Productions.
Ramus, Franck, and Jacques Mehler
1999 “
Language Identification with Suprasegmental Cues: A Study Based on Speech Resynthesis.”
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 105 (1): 512–521.
Ramus, Franck, Marina Nespor, and Jacques Mehler
1999 “
Correlates of Linguistic Rhythm in the Speech Signal.”
Cognition 73 (3): 265–292.
Vogel, Irene, Angeliki Athanasopoulou, and Nadya Pincus
2016 “
Prominence, Contrast and the Functional Load Hypothesis: An Acoustic Investigation.” In
Dimensions of Phonological Stress, ed. by
Jeffrey Heinz,
Rob Goedemans, and
Harry van der Hulst, 123–167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Garcia, Guilherme D
2020.
Language transfer and positional bias in English stress.
Second Language Research 36:4
► pp. 445 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 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.