Syllable-timed language

From Poetry Wiki

Template:Expert-subject In every language, speech emission is based on a sequence of elementary sound units; some of them play a specific part: through their isochronic recurrence, they produce the rhythm of the sentences. In a syllable-timed language, these rhythm units are syllables.

Whereas most Romance languages are stress-timed, French is syllable-timed; indeed, it sounds as if it is stressed lightly at the end of each word. In contrast, Finnish, another syllable-timed language, sounds as if it is lightly stressed on the first syllable of each word.

In the Slovene language the rhythm is syllable-timed which means that most syllables receive approximately equal stress and their length does not vary as much as in stressed-timed languages.

See also

• Timing (linguistics)
• Stress-timed language
• Mora-timed language

External links

• Étude sur la discrimination des langues par la prosodie (pdf document) (French)
• Languages’ rhythm and language acquisition (pdf document)
• Supra-segmental Phonology (rhythm, intonation and stress-timing)Template:Ling-stub

br:Mentadur hervez ar silabennoù fr:Langue syllabique