Fonetica y

Fonologia
Inglesa II
«English and Spanish
linguistic rhythm»
DEFINITION OF
RHYTHM
 «Rhythm has traditionally been
conceived as the way in which
accented and unaccented syllables
follow each other in the utterance»
 «In the case of English, its rhythm is
based on a marked contrast between
the prominent and non-prominent
parts »
(Finch, D & Ortiz Lira, H 1982: 115)
SPANISH AND ENGLISH
RHYTHM
SIMILARITIES
 Content words (as opposed to
grammatical words) tend to be stressed in
both Spanish and English
DIFFERENCES
 In Spanish, the elements which tend to occur
regularly in the utterance are the syllables
in general (both stressed and unstressed)
 In English, only the accented ones.
CLASSIFICATION OF
LINGUISTIC RHYTHM
 SYLLABLE-TIMED:
 Stressed and unstressed syllables have roughly
the same duration
 There is no vowel weakening or syllable
reduction ( no /@/-like vowels)
 STRESS-TIMED:
 Stressed syllables are much longer than
unstressed ones
 Unstressed syllables get drastically
compressed
 INSTANCES
 HeTOLD me that I was WRONG
(there are only two rhythmical beats, the three
syllables in between are drastically obscured and
shortened)

 Me DIjo que esTAba equivoCAda

(All the syllables occur regularly, they all have
approximately the same duration)
RULES FOR SENTENCE
STRESS
 Without a clear understanding of rules for
sentences stress, proper shortening of
grammatical words is not possible.
 Only content words (nouns-adjectives-
main verbs-adverbs-demonstrative
and interrogative pronouns) are likely
to carry sentence stress.
 What grammatical categories are NOT
likely to bear sentence stress, then?
PEDAGOGICAL
IMPLICATIONS
 As there is no syllable reduction in Spanish,
students fail to perceive UNSTRESS in
English and they also fail to REDUCE
unstressed syllables, giving the same
duration to both stressed and unstressed
syllables.
 Thus, rhythm sounds Spanish-like and odd.
 Students should compress and shorten
unstressed syllables.
Syllable duration in English
(stress-timed rhythm)
The children represent number and duration of
unstressed syllables, while grownups stand for
stressed
syllables
(long and
strong)

e.g. I could ´ve GONE to the aSSYLum

(there are only two stressed syllables, represented
by capital letters, the rest being unstressed)
Syllable duration in Spanish
(syllable-timed rhythm)
 Stressed and unstressed syllables have
roughly the same duration (that´s why all the
soldiers are identical in
height and
weight)

e.g. Me piDIÓ que tamBIÉN le haBLAra a IRma

(some syllables are stressed while some are
not, yet they all have about the same duration)
References
 Barrera Pardo, Darío «The reality of
stress-timing», ELT Journal Vol 62/1
January 2008/elt/com073
 Ortiz Lira, H & Finch, D A Course in
English Phonetics for Spanish Speakers.
London: Heinemann, 1982.
 Shnitzer, M Fonología Contrastiva
Español-Inglés. San Juan de Puerto Rico:
Piedras Press, 1997.