The Pairwise Variability Index and Coexisting Rhythms in Language

Francis Nolan · Eva Liina Asu

130 citations0/0 files storedPhonetica

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Phonetics and Phonology Research Voice and Speech Disorders Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition

Abstract

The Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) has been widely used as a metric for quantifying 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.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 130 citations exist upstream.

References

1947The intonation of American English. By Kenneth L. Pike. (University of Michigan Publications: Linguistics, Vol. 1.) Pp. xi + 200, lithoprinted. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1946.1999Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal 1988The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access.1983Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed 2000Q uantitative Characterizations of Speech Rhythm: Syllable-Timing in Singapore English 2013Durational variability in speech and the Rhythm Class Hypothesis 2007Calibrating rhythm: First language and second language studies 2016The sounds of Spanish

Cited by

2014Speech rhythm: a metaphor?2012An investigation of speech rhythm in London English 2011Rhythm measures and dimensions of durational variation in speech 2014L2 ACQUISITION OF PROSODIC PROPERTIES OF SPEECH RHYTHM 2015Acquisition of speech rhythm in a second language by learners with rhythmically different native languages

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.