Talk:Syllable-timed language

This article is impossible to understand for the non-linguist. It needs translation.

Perhaps that is the case, or perhaps it is simply wrong. The only syllable-timed languages I am sure of are French and Finnish. I take it that 'stress-timed' can be regarded as the opposite. Thus Spanish, even though its syllables are timed very nearly the same, is stress-timed, as it does have light stress. The article on Spanish claims it is syllable-timed, at the same time as discussing its stress accents. I shall be having another look at that. Meanwhile, to my ears, Italian is stressed fortissimo, while Brazilian is no less stressed than European Portuguese. Rothorpe 15:15, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I attempted a partial rewrite. Rothorpe 17:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

With regard to Spanish, the Timing (linguistics) page mentions that Mexican is more stressed-timed than most Spanish, as it is American-influenced. My first exposure to the languge was through a Mexican. Seems Spanish is a bit of a half-way house, then. Rothorpe 17:47, 29 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spanish is generally considered to be a syllable-timed language, although my investigations into the topic have found that the traditional notions of "syllable-timed", "stress-timed" and "mora-timed" do not hold up under acoustic studies. Acoustic studies of Spanish, for example, as I recall, found that the length of syllables varied depending on how many segments were in the syllable. So, even though people are capable of putting languages into three categories, it is apparently not timing that we are using to do this. To my knowledge, linguists are still unaware of what we do use to do this, awaiting further empirical research, although things like syllable weight or syllable structure may be involved. (E.g. a lot of "syllable-timed" languages have also have a lot of open syllables, while many "stress-timed" languages have a lot of closed syllables.) We should remember to edit the entire group of related articles: stress-timed language, syllable-timed language, and mora-timed language together. Certainly the list of the languages that are considered to be syllable-timed needs serious revision. 155.97.38.225 22:01, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I have read that Brazilian Portuguese is supposed to be syllable-timed, and European Portuguese is supposed to be stress-timed.71.219.22.222 05:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Being a syllable-timed language does not mean that the language lacks stress. Rather it means that timing is based on syllables rather than on stress. In the same way, being a stress-timed language in no way implies that a language lacks syllables! It simply means, that as in English, stressed syllables are pronounced with a greater duration than are unstressed syllables. Spanish has stressed syllables, certainly, but the timing of the language is based on syllables, and even stressed syllables receive about the same duration as unstressed syllables. You're right to point out some exceptions, for example many rural, northern Mexican dialects of Spanish. Interlingua 02:01, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merge?

I wonder if this page shouldn't be merged with Stress-timed language, although I'm not quite sure what we'd call it (in any case, the older pages would redirect to it). The two concepts seem better explained with reference to each other, rather than in two separate articles. Moreover, there needs to be some discussion of how problematic the distinction is (as 155.97.38.225 hints), as many people with a little knowledge of linguistics (and some with a lot) are a little too enamoured of it, without realising how empirical work has found it rather troublesome. This language log post goes into it a little, if you'd like more information. What do other people think? Should it be merged and what would be a good title for the result? garik (talk) 16:09, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]