AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.
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AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2017 No 3 (2017), 79–94
Appeal and disrepute of the so-called global rhythm metrics
Jan Volín
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2017.35
published online: 01. 09. 2017
abstract
Since the late 1990’s correlates of rhythm classes of languages have been profusely used to search for differences between languages, dialects, speaking styles, degree of foreign accents, etc. Over the years the original attractiveness of the metrics has been replaced with suspicion and, occasionally, even fierce criticism. Among many reservations the critics argue that the metrics are only based on durational measures ignoring other dimensions of prominence, and they are considerably influenced by local temporal variation in utterances. We argue that the metrics could still be exploited in speech research as long as we do not expect them to reflect “speech rhythm” and as long as the proper account of their use is supplied. This study provides simulations to demonstrate the behaviour of the most commonly utilised metrics, and presents representative measurements of some Czech and English speech recordings under several conditions.
keywords: speech rhythm; rhythm classes; rhythm configurations; temporal structure; global metrics
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