Stress-Timing and Syllable-Timing Reanalyzed

Comparisons of data from continuous texts in English, Thai, Spanish, Italian and Greek, show that interstress intervals in English, a stress-timed language, are no more isochronous than interstress intervals in Spanish, a syllable-timed language, or any of the other languages investigated. A tendency for stresses to recur regularly appears to be a language universal property. The difference between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages has to do with differences in syllable structure, vowel reduction, and the phonetic realization of stress and its influence on the linguistic system. Languages, language varieties, or historical stages of a language can be considered more or less stress-based depending on differences in these characteristics. It seems likely that rhythmic grouping takes place even in languages which have been called syllable-timed.