The Pairwise Variability Index and Coexisting Rhythms in Language

The Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) has been widely used as a metric for quan-tifying rhythm in languages, often with a view to placing them on a continuum between notional categories of stress-timing and syllable-timing. We review the history of and rationale for the PVI, and point out three potential anomalies in the way the PVI has been applied. Following up one of these we apply the PVI to the level of the foot, and argue that stress-timing and syllable-timing are not points at either end of a continuum but orthogonal dimensions, so that a language can be (for instance) both syllable-timed and stress-timed. Results from Estonian, English, Mexican Spanish, and Castilian Spanish are presented which give some support for this view.

[1]  D. Taylor.  NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS AND THE RHYTHM OF ENGLISH , 1981 .

[2]  K. Pike,et al.  The intonation of American English , 1946 .

[3]  Fred Cummins.  Speech rhythm and rhythmic taxonomy , 2002, Speech Prosody 2002.

[4]  R. M. Dauer.  Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. , 1983 .

[5]  Francis Nolan,et al.  Estonian and English rhythm: a two-dimensional quantification based on syllables and feet , 2006, Speech Prosody 2006.

[6]  Ee Ling Low,et al.  Prosodic prominence in Singapore English. , 1998 .

[7]  Antoni Bertrán.  Prosodic Typology: on the Dychotomy between Stress. Timed and Syllable-Timed Languages , 1999 .

[8]  F. Ramus.  Acoustic correlates of linguistic rhythm: Perspectives , 2002 .

[9]  F. Nolan,et al.  The role of Action Theory in the description of speech production , 1982 .

[10]  R. Tongue,et al.  The English of Singapore and Malaysia , 1979 .

[11]  Bistra Andreeva,et al.  Do Rhythm Measures Tell us Anything about Language Type , 2003 .

[12]  Francis Nolan,et al.  Estonian rhythm and the Pairwise Variability Index , 2005 .

[13]  J. Hualde.  The sounds of Spanish , 2005 .

[14]  A. Eriksson,et al.  Aspects of Swedish speech rhythm , 1991 .

[15]  David H. Deterding,et al.  The measurement of rhythm: a comparison of Singapore and British English , 2001, J. Phonetics.

[16]  F. Ramus,et al.  Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal , 1999, Cognition.

[17]  Anne Cutler,et al.  The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access , 1988 .

[18]  Robert F. Port,et al.  Rhythmic constraints on stress timing in English , 1998 .

[19]  Ilse Lehiste,et al.  The Temporal Structure of Estonian Runic Songs , 2001 .

[20]  Ruth E. Cumming,et al.  Should rhythm metrics take account of fundamental frequency ? , 2008 .

[21]  G. Pointon.  Is Spanish really syllable-timed? , 1980 .

[22]  Phillip M Carter.  Quantifying Rhythmic Differences between Spanish, English, & Hispanic English , 2005 .

[23]  A. Botinis,et al.  Intonation , 2001, Speech Commun..

[24]  E. Grabe,et al.  Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis , 2005 .

[25]  A. M. B. D. Manrique,et al.  Segmental duration and rhythm in Spanish , 1983 .

[26]  Anastasia Karlsson,et al.  Rhythm and intonation in Halh Mongolian , 2005 .

[27]  E. Keane.  Prominence in Tamil , 2006, Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

[28]  Low Ee Ling,et al.  Q uantitative Characterizations of Speech Rhythm: Syllable-Timing in Singapore English , 2000, Language and speech.

[29]  Laurence White,et al.  Calibrating rhythm: First language and second language studies , 2007, J. Phonetics.