Unit 3: Rhythm .

1. Introduction .

● We should previously have drilled accentuation, syllable length, and vowel weakening.
● One of the basic principles governing English Rhythm is the fact that accented syllables
tend to be regularly separated from each other by unaccented ones, and that the
“distance” from one accented syllable to another accented syllable must be
approximately the same.
● Compare these 6 peaks of prominence:

● This is called isochrony: the accented syllables are separated from each other by equal
intervals of time.
● However, we can find noticeable differences between stress-timed languages (English)
vs. syllable-timed languages (Spanish-French-Italian).
● English is said to have a stress-timed rhythm because we have accented syllables
separated by unaccented ones which tend to be compressed and quickened, so that the
time between accented syllables will be approximately the same as the time taken by
two consecutive accented syllables.
● Spanish-French-Italian can be said to have a syllable-timed rhythm because it is the
syllables, either accented or not, which tend to occur at more or less regular intervals. In
these languages, specially in Spanish, unaccented syllables are only slightly shortened
and weakened.
● The Borrowing rule. When a syllable containing a long vowel or a diphthong is
followed by unstressed syllables, that vowel or diphthong is generally shorter than if
the syllable were final or were followed by another stressed syllable. Moreover, the
greater the number of following unstressed syllables the shorter is the stressed
vowel.
● Compare:

There’s NO time
There’s NObody there
There’s NO gratitude there

He MOVES fast
He MOVES very rapidly
His MOVEments are very rapid

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 ● When we have an utterance (unit) with a stressed syllable as its head and some
unstressed syllables which may occur before and after it, this is called a rhythm unit.
● How do we decide which syllables go together in a rhythm unit?
- If the unstressed syllable is part of the same word of the stressed syllable, they
belong to the same rhythm group:
CHEAper FARES
CHEAP aFFAIRS.
- If the unstressed syllable is closely connected grammatically to the stressed
word, they belong to the same unit too:
GIVE it to JOHN
TAKE them for a WALK
HOW did you MAnage to be THERE in TIME?

What’s a foot? (P. Roach, 2009)

Rhythmic unit/group (unit of rhythm, foot): the unit begins with a stressed syllable and
includes all following unstressed syllables up to (but not including) the following stressed
syllable:
The example below would be divided into feet as follows (stressed syllables are marked with ‘
and the units are divided by a vertical line):

Thus, in this example we have 5 units of rhythm or feet, as it is specified above each unit
begins with a stressed syllable and includes all following unstressed syllables up to the
following stressed syllable.
Each stressed syllable constitutes the peak of prominence in a rhythmic group, which may or
may not include other unstressed syllables.
Grammatical words are squeezed in order to fit into the constant time interval between two
stressed syllables.

RHYTHM DOCUMENT

Rhythm is both a feature of and product of the phonological structure of English. The
phonology of any language is a system, so that a change in one part of the system will affect
some or all of the other parts.
The system looks like this:

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English is a very rhythmical language, so that a learner who can maintain the rhythm of the
language is more likely to sound both natural and fluent. The two components of the system
which have the greatest influence on rhythm are sentence stress and the various features of
connected speech, i.e. what happens to words when we put them in an utterance.

Sentence stress
In any sentence, some words carry a stress. These are the ‘strong’ or ‘lexical’ words (usually
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs). The remaining words are ‘grammatical’ words and are
unstressed or ‘weak’ (conjunctions, pronouns, prepositions, auxiliaries, articles).

‘It’s the worst thing that you could do’

The rhythm produced by this combination of stressed and unstressed syllables is a major
characteristic of spoken English and makes English a stress-timed language. In stress-timed
languages, there is a roughly equal amount of time between each stress in a sentence,
compared with a syllable-timed language (such as French, Turkish and West Indian English) in
which syllables are produced at a steady rate which is unaffected by stress differences.
Sentence stress is an important factor in fluency, as English spoken with only strong forms
has the wrong rhythm, sounds unnatural and does not help the listener to distinguish
emphasis or meaning.

Connected speech
Speed is also a factor in fluency. When we speak quickly, we speak in groups of words which
are continuous and may not have pauses between them. This causes changes to the ‘shape’ of
words. Unstressed words always sound different when used in a sentence as opposed to being
said in isolation.
The most common features of connected speech are the weak forms of grammatical and
some lexical words (and, to, of, have, was, were) and contractions, some of which are
acceptable in written English (can't, won't, didn't, I'll, he'd, they've, should’ve).
However, we often ignore other features which preserve rhythm and make the language
sound natural. The most common of these are:
● Elision (losing sounds)
● Linking (adding or joining sounds between words)
● Assimilation (changing sounds)

Added to these is the use of the schwa, the most common vowel sound in English.
Many unstressed vowel sounds tend to become schwa, and because it is an important
feature of weak forms, learners should be able to recognise and produce it.

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There is a temptation to try to teach the rules associated with these features, using
phonemic script to write examples. An awareness-raising approach is often more profitable,
starting by asking students what happens to certain words when we put them in a sentence:

2. English sentence stress .

(Mott, 2011)

2.1. Sentence Stress. Introduction

When words are put together to form phrases and sentences, they are subject to rhythmical
variations. This means that words which in isolation would always be stressed may lose their
stresses because of the presence of other strong stresses in surrounding syllables. For example, in
the sentence:
The stránge dárk mán shót twó yóung cóps (stress is marked with ´ )
It is possible for all the words except “the” to be stressed because they are important word
classes (nouns and adjectives and a verb), but to create a rhythm that is more interesting to
the ear we will usually suppress some of these strong beats and say the sentence in the
following manner:
The stránge dark mán shot twó young cóps.

English favors a binary, alternating rhythm; thus two fully stressed syllables together is not
common in rapid speech, and in a sentence like this we tend to pronounce every other strong
stress to achieve a “pleasing rhythm”. Another example of this can be seen when we ask a
native speaker to say the numbers from one to ten. S/he will put stress on the odd numbers
and destress the even numbers, except possibly the last one:
Óne two thrée four fíve six séven eight níne ten.
This does not happen in Spanish as you will notice how you emphasize all the numbers

This tendency of English has repercussions for the pronunciation of double-stressed words,
which undergo displacement of the primary stress to the left when they are collocated in a
phrase and a strong stress follows. Compare: primary stress and secondary stress are
marked with (´`) respectively- we´ve already talked about this in the unit of stress-.

Thirtéen but thírteen wómen

Insíde but ínside óut
`Good-húmoured but a góod-humoured gírl

Notice that the primary stress moves back to the first syllable that is able to receive it, i.e. the
one that originally had secondary stress. If a strong stress immediately precedes such words,
then they lose their secondary stress:
Ùndóne it cáme undóne
Pìcturésque quíte picturésque

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But the RHYTHM RULE does not permit rightward movement of primary stress in cases of
stress clash. Apart from factors like context (surrounding stress patterns), message and
whether the information is new or not, the number of stresses we use in an utterance
ultimately depends on speed of delivery, so the following sentence might have four, three or
only two strong stresses according to how fast it was uttered:
He dídn’t wánt to gét úp.
He dídn’t wánt to get úp.
He dídn’t want to get úp.
Note that the stress on the adverbial particle “up” is retained. It is often the case that a verb
can be destressed while its adverbial particle retains its stress because, after all, it is the
particle which ultimately determines the meaning of phrasal verbs.
On the other hand, in the case of verb+preposition, it is the verb that takes the strong stress:
Wáit for the sígnal;
Lísten to the músic;
Lóok at the clóck

2.2. Content Words And Stress. The Anaphora Rule

The relative stress of words in a sentence depends on their relative importance. The most
important words are: nouns, adjectives, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, principal
verbs and adverbs (CONTENT WORDS), so in the following examples, it is these word classes
which are stressed:
Whén would you like to spéak to the mánager?
The néw clóth was álready on the táble.
Whát would you hópe to achíeve by wríting a létter?
Thát was the lást stráw

However, there are some exceptions to this general rule:

1. When it is desired to emphasize a word for contrast (contrastive stress), its stress is
increased, while the stress of the surrounding words is diminished.
Thus in the following example, if we emphasize the function words “ín” and “róund”,
the lexical words “food” and “mouth” are relieved from the stresses:
Pút the food ín your mouth, nót róund your mouth.
Do you wánt coffee wíth sugar, or withóut sugar?
2. When a sentence contains a word which has been used just before, that word is not
generally stressed. This is called the ANAPHORA RULE, examples:
Hów many tímes did he hít you? Thrée times (no stress on the second token of TIMES). My
name’s Bónd, Jámes Bond (no stress on the second token of BOND).
Anaphora rule → New information is going to be stressed but when it’s repeated it’s
going to be unstressed.
3. Exclamatory “what” is unstressed:

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 What a wónderful dáy! What stránge péople!
4. The word “street” in names of streets is never stressed:
Góodge street; Wárren street but Drúry Láne, Ábbey Róad, Sháftesbury Ávenue
5. The various parts of the verb “to be” are generally unstressed, except in final position
after an unstressed personal pronoun:
The férry-boat was néarly always late; The cáts were wáiting to be féd;
Hére we áre. I dón’t know whére it ís

Given the different accentuation patterns observed in English and Spanish, the main problem that Spanish
speakers have when they speak English is that they always place the main accent on the last word of a
sentence, no matter whether it is old or new information. It’s crucial that Spanish speakers note that English
sentence stress is more flexible than the Spanish one and that the location of the main accent can be moved
from sentence final position to forward elements if they are more informative (Estebas Vilaplana, 2009).

2. 3. Broad And Narrow Focus Sentences

To refer to parts of utterances which are highlighted because they express important
information and therefore receive sentence stress, we use the term FOCUS.
A sentence in which no particular element is more important than the others because all the
information is new is called BROAD FOCUS SENTENCE. Thus, an “out-of-the-blue”
statement like “Fréd likes físh” is a sentence of this kind. The whole sentence is in focus and
stands in potential contrast to any other possible utterance in English like “Mary hates
cabbage” or “Mark plays football”.

Document 8.1 The Rhythm of English:

Human beings speak rhythmically: they engage in the act of speaking by putting regular beats
in the speech signal. You can hear those beats in an English utterance such as The man went to
the bar. Here, the beats are on man, went and bar. In most varieties of English, we do not
necessarily place a beat on every single syllable. In this utterance, no beat falls on the
preposition to, or on the two occurrences of the. This is because English, unlike certain other
languages, is stress-timed: the rhythmic beats fall only on stressed syllables. In our example,
only man, went and pub are stressed, so the beats fall only on those. English is unlike many
other languages in this respect. Take the phrase Chicken MacNuggets,

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Write the lyrics:
Rhythm:
HUMpty DUMpty SAT on a WALL
0 o 0 o 0 o o 0
HUMpty DUMpty HAD a GREAT FALL
0 o 0 o 0 o o 0
ALL the KING’S HORses and ALL the KING’s MEN
0 o 0 o 0 o o 0
COULDN’T put HUMpty toGEther aGAIN

Video about rhythm

Activity 1:
Say WHY these words/phrases are mentioned in the first part of the video (up to 5:56)

1. Linguistic event: rhythm can be described as a repetition of a linguistic event which tends to
occur at approximately the same interval of time. (A linguistic event is related to rhythm and
its repetition in an interval of time determines the kind of rhythm a language has).
2. Syllables: because there are languages in which the event that occurs at the same time is
the syllable
3. Stress: in other languages, this event is the stress or stressed syllables
4. Spanish: it is an example of syllable-timed language (all syllables occur at similar time
intervals )
5. Similar duration: It takes more or less the same time to pronounce each syllable (stressed or
unstressed) in the example of the sentence in Spanish (each syllable has a similar duration in
Spanish) whereas in English, there’s a similar duration between stressed syllables in English
(stress-timed rhythm)
6. Foot: it’s the unit of rhythm → it contains the number of syllables from one stressed
syllable up to the next. Syllables are compressed within a foot, unstressed and stressed
altogether.
Unit of rhythm which begins with a stressed syllable and is followed by zero or more
unstressed syllables.
7. Compress: grammatical words are compressed in order to fit into the constant time interval
between two stressed syllables.
8. Isochrony: tendency to keep the same amount of time between feet (from one stressed
syllable to the next stressed syllable)
9. Anacrusis: one (or more) unstressed syllables that don't belong to any foot
Unstressed syllables before the first stress of an utterance (these syllables do not belong to
any foot)

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Activity 2.

Watch the next part of the video and answer these questions:

1. What happens when we have consecutive short words which are stressed?
There’s a tendency to drop the stress in the middle (to ease the production of stressed-time
stress patterns)
2. What's "stress clash"?
Portuguese (secondary stress in the first syllable, primary stress in the second syllable)
If this type of word is produced before a word that starts with a stress syllable (ex. history)
there’s a stress class, which means that two stresses come together.
Two consecutive stresses belonging to different words.
3. What's stress shift?
The displacement or relocation of the primary stress into a secondary stress position as a
result of a stress clash.
This is produced to avoid the stress clash.
Stress-clash leads to a relocation of the primary stress to a secondary stress position, this is
called stress shift. ,Portu'guese but 'Portuguese 'history.
4. Is there stress shift in Spanish?
There is no relocation of the stress in Spanish, even though there is stress-clash.
5. Why are weak forms relevant for English rhythm?
Because they permit to maintain the rhythm, the isochrony
They allow to keep a stress-timed rhythm/ rhythmic pattern
6. What examples of weak forms are mentioned?
Production of function words with a weak vowel
(prepositions, articles, …)
The boy and the girl; John must (with schwa) go; a pound of sugar

Questions onthe reading about English rhythm (Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses)

1. How many kinds of rhythm are there in languages and what do they consist of?
There are two kinds of rhythm in languages:
1. Syllable-timed rhythm, where syllables tend to occur at regular intervals of time, and
consequently all syllables tend to have the same length (e.g. Spanish and French) and
2. Stressed-limed rhythm, where stressed syllables tend to occur at regular intervals.
That means that the syllables might vary in length since there might be a varying
number of syllables between stresses.

2. What kind of rhythm does English have and what does it mean?
English has a stressed-time rhythm, where stressed syllables tend to occur at regular
intervals. That means that the syllables might vary in length since there might be a varying
number of syllables between stresses. Syllables vary in ---

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3. How is English rhythm organized?
In English, rhythm is organized into feet (Abercrombie 1964).
4. What’s the structure of a foot? How is foot boundary indicated?
The foot begins with the stressed syllable and includes all the unstressed syllables up to the
next stress where a new foot begins. We can use slashes to indicate foot boundary.
5. How many feet are there in the following sentence and why: “I want you to come with me to the
doctor's tomorrow”?
There are 4 as: I / 'want you to / 'come with me to the / 'doctor's to / 'morrow
There are 4 foot because there are 4 stresses
6. Why is rhythm tempo dependent?
Because the faster the speech, the more stressed-timed the rhythm
7. Are languages purely stressed-timed or syllable-timed?
No language is purely stressed-timed or syllable-timed but tends to behave more like one or
the other pattern.
8. Why is there a “strong vowel reduction” in English?
In English unstressed syllables have little time to be produced in order to keep the rhythmic
beat on the stressed syllables. Thus, there is a strong reduction in vowel quality due to the
undershoot phenomenon: in the short time allotted for the pronunciation of unstressed
vowels the articulators do not achieve the vowel target, resulting in the centralized vowels
[schwa, i, u].
9. What are the main differences in relation to syllable structure between syllable-timed and
stress-timed languages and why?
In the case of syllable-timed languages, they have a simple syllable structure whereas in
stressed-timed languages syllable structure is complex. The reduction and subsequent elision
of unstressed vowels have resulted in a large amount of consonant clusters and a complex
syllable structure in English.
10. Why is there a secondary stress in stress-timed languages?
Stress-timed languages tend to have secondary stress in words (or to introduce rhythmical
stresses in longer sequences) in order to avoid long sequences of unstressed syllables and to
keep the rhythmic beat.
11. According to the rule, before a stressed syllable, how many unstressed syllables should we
have in succession? And if there’s more than those, what do we need?
In English no stressed syllable in a word can be preceded by more than two unstressed
syllables in succession, a secondary stress is introduced (e.g.,clarifi'catión,
re,conside''radon,varia'bility).
12. How many unstressed syllables can we have after the stressed syllable?
After the stressed syllable there may be up to three unstressed syllables, but only in words
with certain suffixes (e.g. ad'ministrative, 'candidacy ).
13. What does it mean that the metrical system in stress-timed languages is of a syllabic type?
In syllable-timed languages the syllable occurs at roughly regular intervals of time and the
syllable is the rhythmical unit in verse (thus, Spanish verse is referred to as 'octosyllable,'
'decasyllable,' etc.). In stressed-timed languages, it is the stress which occurs regularly and

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the metric system is based on the foot (thus, English verse is referred to as iambic, trochee,
anapest, etc., which refer to different stress patterns of the foot).
14. Why are feet “isochronous”?
Because in English, stresses occur at roughly regular intervals of time, and therefore all feet
tend to be of equal duration (or isochronous).
15. In English, which of the following feet takes longer to be pronounced: a foot with four
syllables or a foot with one syllable?
They take the same amount of time to be pronounced
16. How can we explain the answer to question 15?
Since feet take roughly the same amount of time to be produced and the number of syllables
in a foot might vary, it follows that the length of syllables must also vary. If a foot with, say, 4
syllables takes the same amount of time to be pronounced as a foot with one syllable, then
each one of the four syllables must be shorter than the one. Thus, if there are no intervening
syllables between two stresses (1 below), the syllable which stands alone in a foot will tend to
be stretched in time. All feet in (1) (Pat) and (2) (Pat should have) will tend to have the same
duration independent of the number of syllables. In order for that to be the case Pat in (1),
which stands alone in its foot, will be longer than Pat in (2), which will be pronounced with a
shorter vowel to allow more time for the unstressed syllables in the foot.
Each one of the four syllables must be shorter than the one. Thus, if there are no intervening
syllables between two stresses, the syllable which stands alone in a foot will tend to be
stretched in time. If there are a number of intervening unstressed syllables, the stressed
syllable will be made shorter, and the unstressed syllables will be squeezed together
between stresses and they will suffer important phonetic reductions such as vowel
weakening, elision, assimilation, haplology, etc.
17. What does it mean that “isochronicity seems to be a gradient feature”?
Not all types of English speech are equally isochronous. The more organized the speech, the
more isochronous it will be. Thus, verse and nursery rhymes are more isochronous than
prose. And prose read aloud or formal speech is more rhythmical than conversational speech,
which may be full of pauses, «uhms and errs», false starts and other interferences due to
memory failure, lack of planning, etc. Thus, isochronicity seems to be a gradient feature.
18. How are “weak forms” related with rhythm?
Since content words are usually given prominence in the utterance, grammatical words will
tend to be unstressed. As unstressed syllables they cluster around a stressed word or
syllable within a foot or rhythmic group. Thus, grammatical words are squeezed in order to fit
into the constant time interval between two stressed syllables.
Another consequence of the stress-timed and isochronous nature of English rhythm is the
existence of weak forms. Since content words are usually given prominence in the utterance,
grammatical words will tend to be unstressed. As unstressed syllables they cluster around a
stressed word or syllable within a foot or rhythmic group. Thus, grammatical words are
squeezed in order to fit into the constant time interval between two stressed. This is so
common in English that many grammatical words are said to have a full form used when the

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word is stressed for rhythmical, emphatic or contrastive reasons, and a weak form used
when the word is unstressed and must be fitted between stresses.
19. What’s rhythmic alternation?
It’s a principle that states that in English weak and strong syllables alternate with one
another
20. What are the factors that contribute to maintain a regular rhythm in English?
It seems that once the lexemes of an utterance have been selected, a set of rules (syntactical,
morphological, phonetic and rhythmic) are applied to the utterance to determine its phonetic
realization.

There are two kinds: (1) There are those which affect the distribution of stresses to ensure
rhythmic alternation:
a. dropping of some stresses to prevent too many stresses coming together, eg. 'nice 'oíd
'book 一* 'nice old 'book;
b. stress addition to avoid a long succession of unstressed syllables, e.g. he should have
‘done it him 'self 一* ’he should have 'done it him 'self.
c. stress movement to a preceding strong syllable if two stresses are next to each other:
Heath'row 'airport 一* 'Heathrow 'airport.

(2) There are those which affect adjustments in the length of sounds to keep a constant time
interval between stresses.
a. Durational variations in the stressed syllable depending on the number of unstressed
syllables in the foot. For example, reduction in vowel length when unstressed syllables
follow. Compare the decreasing duration of the stressed vowel in 'lead, ‘leader,
‘leadership. (borrowing rule)
b. Reduction processes that affect unstressed syllables: vowel reduction, consonant
weakening, elision, assimilation, haplology. For example, probably ['probabli] →
['pra:bli], solicitor [sa'lisita] → ['slista].
c. Weak forms.

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PRACTICE 1. Divide the sentences into units (feet)

1. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A bird/ in the hand/is worth two/ in the bush → 4 feet
2. Over a quarter of a century has elapsed since his death.
Over a quarter/ of a century/ has elapsed/ since his death → 4 feet
3. Computers consume a considerable amount
Computers/ consume/ a considerable amount/ of money/ and time → 5 feet
4. Most of them have arrived on the bus.
Most of them/ have arrived/ on the bus. → 3 feet
5. Newspaper editors are invariably underworked.
Newspaper editors/ are invariably underworked → 2 feet

* If the sentence starts with an unstressed syllable, leave it out of consideration - it doesn't belong to
any foot.
** A foot will naturally pause when we’re going to do a pause in speaking

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SONGS!

1. Listen again to “Humpty Dumpty” and mark the stressed syllables:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again!

2. Listen to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and mark the stressed syllables:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Like a diamond in the sky
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are.

1. W, W, W
2. S
3. S, S
4. S
5. W, W
6. W, W
7. W
8. W, W
9. S
10. W, W, W
11. W, S
12. W, W, S

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