Abstract
This chapter critically discusses recent research on speech rhythm in native, learner and second language varieties of English. Impressionistic descriptions have often claimed that Second Language or ‘Outer Circle’ varieties of English are syllable-timed, in contrast to the stress-timed rhythm of Native or ‘Inner Circle’ varieties of English. With a view to the reconceptualisation of speech rhythm as a continuum between stress- and syllable-timing, this claim can be rephrased as Second Language (or Outer Circle) varieties of English being more syllable-timed than Native (or Inner Circle) varieties of English. In a synthesis of recent empirical research, results from 18 studies are compared. Overall, the claim of a tendency towards syllable-timing can be confirmed not only for Outer Circle Englishes, but also, more tentatively, for Learner or ‘Expanding Circle’ varieties of English. However, several caveats are needed to qualify these conclusions, relating to the selection of varieties of English studied by recent research and the methodologies employed in the field. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the subsequent chapters in the volume contribute towards addressing these concerns and thus advance the study of speech rhythm in native, learner and second language varieties of English.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abney, D. H., Kello, C. T., & Balasubramaniam, R. (2017). Introduction and application of the multiscale coefficient of variation analysis. Behavior Research Methods, 49(5), 1571–1581.
Alexandrou, A. M., Saarinen, T., Kujala, J., & Salmelin, R. (2018). Cortical tracking of global and local variations of speech rhythm during connected natural speech perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30(11), 1704–1719.
Behrman, A., Ferguson, S. H., Akhund, A., & Moeyaert, M. (2019). The effect of clear speech on temporal metrics of rhythm in Spanish-accented speakers of English. Language and Speech, 62(1), 5–29.
Bruthiaux, P. (2003). Squaring the circles: Issues in modelling English worldwide. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13(2), 159–178.
Buschfeld, S. (2019). Children’s English in Singapore: Acquisition, properties, and use. Routledge.
Choe, W. K. (2019). The realization of English rhythm by Busan Korean speakers. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 11(4), 81–87.
Choe, W. K. (2022). The effect of pronunciation teaching on the realization of English rhythm by Korean learners of English. Phonetics and Speech Sciences, 14(2), 19–28.
Crystal, D. (1995). Documenting rhythmical change. In J. Windsor Lewis (Ed.), Studies in general and English phonetics: Essays in honour of Professor J. D. O’Connor (pp. 174–179). Routledge.
Daigmorte, C., Tallet, J., & Astésano, C. (2022). On the foundations of rhythm-based methods in speech therapy. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 47–51).
Deterding, D. (2001). The measurement of rhythm: A comparison of Singapore and British English. Journal of Phonetics, 29(2), 217–230, S009544700190138X. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2001.0138.
Ding, H., Lin, B., Wang, L., Wang, H., & Fang, R. (2020). A comparison of English rhythm produced by native American speakers and Mandarin ESL Primary School learners. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2020 (pp. 4481–4485).
Ding, H., & Xu, X. (2016). L2 English rhythm in read speech by Chinese students. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2016 (pp. 2696–2700).
Edwards, A. (2016). English in the Netherlands: Functions, forms and attitudes. Benjamins.
Edwards, A., & Fuchs, R. (2020). Varieties of English in the Netherlands and Germany. In R. Hickey (Ed.), English in the German-Speaking World (pp. 267–293). Cambridge University Press.
Falk, S., & Kello, C. T. (2017). Hierarchical organization in the temporal structure of infant-direct speech and song. Cognition, 163, 80–86.
Fuchs, R. (2016). Speech rhythm in varieties of English. Evidence from educated Indian English and British English. Springer.
Fuchs, R. (To appear). Analysing the speech rhythm of New Englishes: A guide to researchers and a case study on Pakistani, Philippine, Nigerian and British English. In G. Wilson & M. Westphal (Eds.), New Englishes, new methods. Benjamins.
Gibbon, D. (in press). The rhythms of rhythm. Journal of the International Phonetic Association.
Goswami, U. (2019). Speech rhythm and language acquisition: An amplitude modulation phase hierarchy perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1453(1), 67–78.
Harding, E. E., Sammler, D., Henry, M. J., Large, E. W., & Kotz, S. A. (2019). Cortical tracking of rhythm in music and speech. NeuroImage, 185, 96–101.
He, L. (2018). Development of speech rhythm in first language: The role of syllable intensity variability. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143(6), EL463–EL467.
Hernandez, A., Yeo, E. J., Kim, S., & Chung, M. (2020). Dysarthria detection and severity assessment using rhythm-based metrics. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2020 (pp. 2897–2901).
Holliman, A. J., Wood, C., & Sheehy, K. (2010). Does speech rhythm sensitivity predict children’s reading ability 1 year later? Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(2), 356–366.
James, A. R. (1988). The acquisition of a second language phonology. Narr.
Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp. 11–30). Cambridge University Press.
Kawasaki, M., Yamada, Y., Ushiku, Y., Miyauchi, E., & Yamaguchi, Y. (2013). Inter-brain synchronization during coordination of speech rhythm in human-to-human social interaction. Scientific Reports, 3(1), 1–8.
Kawase, S., Kim, J., & Davis, C. (2016). The influence of second language experience on Japanese-accented English rhythm. In Proceedings of 8th International Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 746–750).
Law, W. L., Dmitrieva, O., & Francis, A. (2020). Convergence of L1 and L2 speech rhythm in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody (pp. 547–550).
Leong, V. (2012). Prosodic rhythm in the speech amplitude envelope: Amplitude modulation phase hierarchies (AMPHs) and AMPH models. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.
Li, A., & Post, B. (2014). L2 acquisition of prosodic properties of speech rhythm: Evidence from L1 Mandarin and German learners of English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 36(2), 223–255.
Low, E. L., Grabe, E., & Nolan, F. (2000). Quantitative characterizations of speech rhythm: Syllable-timing in Singapore English. Language and Speech, 43, 377–401.
Liss, J. M., White, L., Mattys, S. L., Lansford, K., Lotto, A. J., Spitzer, S. M., & Caviness, J. N. (2009). Quantifying speech rhythm abnormalities in the dysarthrias. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 52(5), 1334–1352.
Liu, S., & Takeda, K. (2021). Mora-timed, stress-timed, and syllable-timed rhythm classes: Clues in English speech production by bilingual speakers. Acta Linguistica Academica, 68(3), 350–369.
Lowit, A., Kuschmann, A. (2012). Characterizing intonation deficit in motor speech disorders: An autosegmental–metrical analysis of spontaneous speech in hypokinetic dysarthria, ataxic dysarthria and foreign accent syndrome. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 55(5), 1472–1484.
Magne, C., Jordan, D. K., & Gordon, R. L. (2016). Speech rhythm sensitivity and musical aptitude: ERPs and individual differences. Brain and Language, 153, 13–19.
Major, R. C. (2001). Foreign accent: The ontogeny and phylogeny of second language phonology. Erlbaum.
Meilán, J. J., Martínez-Sánchez, F., Martínez-Nicolás, I., Llorente, T. E., & Carro, J. (2020). Changes in the rhythm of speech difference between people with nondegenerative mild cognitive impairment and with preclinical dementia. Behavioural Neurology, 2020, 4683573.
Mesthrie, R. (2008). Synopsis: The phonology of English in Africa and South and Southeast Asia. In R. Mesthrie (Ed.), Varieties of English. Africa, South and Southeast Asia (pp. 307–319). de Gruyter.
Mok, P., & Dellwo, V. (2008). Comparing native and non-native speech rhythm using acoustic rhythmic measures: Cantonese, Beijing Mandarin and English. In Proceedings of the 4th Speech Prosody Conference (pp. 423–426).
Nguyen, A. T. T. (2018). L2 English rhythm by Vietnamese speakers: A rhythm metric study (P. Robertson & B. Čubrović, Eds.). 12(1), 22–44.
Nolan, F., & Jeon, H. S. (2014). Speech rhythm: A metaphor? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 369(1658), 20130396.
Oñate, K. C. (2019). Testing the effect of synchronous speech tasks in the production of L2 speech rhythm in learners of Spanish as a second language. Doctoral dissertation, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.
Ordin, M., & Polyanskaya, L. (2015). Acquisition of speech rhythm in a second language by learners with rhythmically different native languages. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(2), 533–544.
Ordin, M., Polyanskaya, L., & Ulbrich, C. (2011). Acquisition of timing patterns in second language. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2011 (pp. 1129–1132).
Ozernov-Palchik, O., & Patel, A. D. (2018). Musical rhythm and reading development: Does beat processing matter? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1423(1), 166–175.
Peelle, J. E., & Davis, M. H. (2012). Neural oscillations carry speech rhythm through to comprehension. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 320.
Pereira, A. S., Kavanagh, E., Hobaiter, C., Slocombe, K. E., & Lameira, A. R. (2020). Chimpanzee lip-smacks confirm primate continuity for speech-rhythm evolution. Biology Letters, 16(5), 20200232.
Prieto, P., del Mar Vanrell, M., Astruc, L., Payne, E., & Post, B. (2012). Phonotactic and phrasal properties of speech rhythm. Evidence from Catalan, English, and Spanish. Speech Communication, 54(6), 681–702.
Rasier, L., & Hiligsmann, P. (2007). Prosodic transfer from L1 to L2. Theoretical and methodological issues. Nouveaux cahiers de linguistique française, 28(2007), 41–66.
Ravignani, A., Dalla Bella, S., Falk, S., Kello, C. T., Noriega, F., & Kotz, S. A. (2019). Rhythm in speech and animal vocalizations: A cross-species perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1453(1), 79–98.
Sarmah, P., Gogoi, D. V., & Wiltshire, C. R. (2009). Thai English: Rhythm and vowels. English World-Wide, 30(2), 196–217.
Schneider, E. W. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge University Press.
Szakay, A. (2006). Rhythm and pitch as markers of ethnicity in New Zealand English. In Proceedings of the 11th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science & Technology, University of Auckland (pp. 421–426).
Thornton, A., & Lee, P. (2000). Publication bias in meta-analysis: Its causes and consequences. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 53(2), 207–216.
Tilsen, S. (2009). Multitimescale dynamical interactions between speech rhythm and gesture. Cognitive Science, 33(5), 839–879.
Tilsen, S. (2019). Space and time in models of speech rhythm. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1453(1), 47–66.
Torgersen, E. N., & Szakay, A. (2012). An investigation of speech rhythm in London English. Lingua, 122(7), 822–840.
Van Maastricht, L., Krahmer, E., Swerts, M., & Prieto, P. (2019). Learning direction matters: A study on L2 rhythm acquisition by Dutch learners of Spanish and Spanish learners of Dutch. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41(1), 87–121.
Van Maastricht, L., Zee, T., Krahmer, E., & Swerts, M. (2021). The interplay of prosodic cues in the L2: How intonation, rhythm, and speech rate in speech by Spanish learners of Dutch contribute to L1 Dutch perceptions of accentedness and comprehensibility. Speech Communication, 133, 81–90.
Vaysse, R., Farinas, J., Astésano, C., & André-Obrecht, R. (2021). Automatic extraction of speech rhythm descriptors for speech intelligibility assessment in the context of head and neck cancers. In Proceedings of Interspeech (pp. 1912–1916).
Westphal, M., & Wilson, G. (2020). New Englishes, new methods: Focus on corpus linguistics. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, 31, 47–65.
White, L., & Mattys, S. L. (2007). Calibrating rhythm: First language and second language studies. Journal of Phonetics, 35(4), 501–522.
White, L., Mattys, S. L., Series, L., & Gage, S. (2007). Rhythm metrics predict rhythmic discrimination. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1009–1011).
Young, N. J. (in press). The sociolectal and stylistic variability of rhythm in Stockholm. Language and Speech, 0023830920969727.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Alina Scheller and Judith Szislo for their assistance in compiling and evaluating relevant previous studies for this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix
Appendix
Variety label | Variety long name | Circle | nPVIV | Source |
---|---|---|---|---|
AmE [Behrmann] | American English | Inner | 51 | Behrman et al. (2019) |
AmE [Choe] | American English | Inner | 66 | Choe (2019) |
AmE [Ding] | American English | Inner | 69.48 | Ding et al. (2020) |
AmE [Li&Post] | American English | Inner | 51.9 | Li and Post (2014) |
AmE [Liu&Takeda] | American English | Inner | 64.8 | Liu and Takeda (2021) |
AusE [Kawase] | Australian English | Inner | 72 | Kawase et al. (2016) |
AusE [Nguyen] | Australian English | Inner | 57 | Nguyen (2018) |
BrE [Ding&Xu] | British English | Inner | 66.74 | Ding and Xu (2016) |
BrE [Fuchs 2016] | British English | Inner | 61.3 | Fuchs (2016) |
BrE [Fuchs in press] | British English | Inner | 62.2 | Fuchs (in press) |
BrE [Low] | British English | Inner | 78 | Low et al. (2000) |
BrE [White] | British English | Inner | 73 | White and Mattys (2007) |
BristolE | Bristol English | Inner | 41 | White et al. (2007) |
Dutch | Dutch | Other | 82 | White and Mattys (2007) |
French | French | Other | 50 | White and Mattys (2007) |
GermanE (high prof.) | German English | Expanding | 45.5 | Li and Post (2014) |
GermanE (lower interm. prof.) | German English | Expanding | 40.1 | Li and Post (2014) |
HKE (high prof.) [Law] | Hong Kong English | Outer | 49.37 | Law et al. (2020) |
HKE (low prof.) [Law] | Hong Kong English | Outer | 43.53 | Law et al. (2020) |
HKE [Setter] | Hong Kong English | Outer | 53.5 | Setter (pc), cited in Fuchs (2016: 88–90) |
IndE | Indian English | Outer | 55.6 | Fuchs (2016) |
JapE | Japanese English | Expanding | 56.3 | Liu and Takeda (2021) |
JapE (exp.) | Japanese English | Expanding | 57 | Kawase et al. (2016) |
JapE (inexp.) | Japanese English | Expanding | 50 | Kawase et al. (2016) |
KorE | Korean English | Expanding | 56 | Choe (2019) |
KorE (beginners) | Korean English | Expanding | 51.3 | White and Mattys (2007) |
KorE (post-intervention) | Korean English | Expanding | 52.22 | Choe (2022) |
KorE (pre-intervention) | Korean English | Expanding | 54.68 | Choe (2022) |
Mandarin Chinese | Mandarin Chinese | Other | 48.2 | Ding and Xu (2016) |
MandarinE (high prof.) | Mandarin English | Expanding | 50.6 | Li and Post (2014) |
MandarinE (low/interm. prof.) | Mandarin English | Expanding | 40.3 | Li and Post (2014) |
MandarinE [Ding&Xu] | Mandarin English | Expanding | 48.81 | Ding and Xu (2016) |
MandarinE [Liu&Takeda] | Mandarin English | Expanding | 59.07 | Liu and Takeda (2021) |
Maori NZE | Maori New Zealand English | Outer | 45.5 | Szakay (2006) |
NigE | Nigerian English | Outer | 55.1 | Fuchs (in press) |
OrkneyE | Orkney English | Inner | 70 | White et al. (2007) |
PakE | Pakistani English | Outer | 54.8 | Fuchs (in press) |
Pakeha NZE | Pakeha New Zealand English | Inner | 57.5 | Szakay (2006) |
PhiE | Philippine English | Outer | 56.1 | Fuchs (in press) |
ScoE | Scottish English | Inner | 73.45 | Lowit andKuschmann (2012) |
ShetlandE | Shetland English | Inner | 77 | White et al. (2007) |
SinE | Singapore English | Outer | 46 | Low et al. (2000) |
SpaE [Berhmann] | Spanish English | Expanding | 51.5 | Behrman et al. (2019) |
SpaE [White] | Spanish English | Expanding | 66 | White and Mattys (2007) |
Spanish | Spanish | Other | 36 | White and Mattys (2007) |
ThaE | Thai English | Expanding | 59.6 | Sarmah et al. (2009) |
Thai | Thai | Other | 54.5 | Sarmah et al. (2009) |
Vietnamese | Vietnamese | Other | 50 | Nguyen (2018) |
VietnE (advanced) | Vietnamese English | Expanding | 56 | Nguyen (2018) |
VietnE (beginner) | Vietnamese English | Expanding | 44 | Nguyen (2018) |
Welsh Valleys Eng | Welsh Valley English | Inner | 42 | White et al. (2007) |
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fuchs, R. (2023). A Synthesis of Research on Speech Rhythm in Native, Learner and Second Language Varieties of English—Introduction to the Volume. In: Fuchs, R. (eds) Speech Rhythm in Learner and Second Language Varieties of English. Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8940-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8940-7_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-8939-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-8940-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)