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English speech rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction
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Journal of Pragmatics25 (1996) 447-450
Book review Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, English speech rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 25. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1993. 346 pp. US $ 75.00. Reviewed by Minna M. Paananen, Department of English, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 4, SF-0004 Helsinki, Finland. The question whether English speech rhythm is isochronous or not, i.e. whether stresses tend to be placed at roughly regular time intervals or not, has been the topic of an endless debate among linguists all over the world. Two competing schools have grown out of this issue: believers and disbelievers. The former believe that English speech rhythm is fundamentlly isochronous, at least perceptually, whereas the latter doubt that isochrony exists in English at all because instrumental experiments have not yielded any evidence for it. For the disbelievers isochrony is then just "a figment of the linguist's imagination" (p. 11). Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen disagrees and takes a compromise view on this matter in her latest book about the form and function of English speech rhythm. She admits that there are perceptually isochronous sequences in English conversation, but points out that non-isochronous sequences may occur as well and that both sequence types have a function in interaction. As the subtitle already implies, Couper-Kuhlen's book consists of two parts. The first part, i.e. the first four chapters, deals with phonetic and phonological features of English speech rhythm. Chapter I outlines the debate about isochrony and discusses one plausible solution to it: perceptual centers (P-centers). Chapter II shows by means of examples how perceptual isochrony can be discovered auditorily and verified acoustically. Chapter III presents other current models of speech rhythm and contrasts speech rhythm with music and verse. Chapter IV looks at the weaknesses in the linear treatment of time and timing in turn-taking and suggests a hierarchical approach based on rhythm instead. The second part of the book starts in Chapter V where the focus shifts to the function of English speech rhythm. Two accounts for synchronized timing in verbal inleraction - rhythm as temporal congruence and rhythm as contextualization cue - are reviewed briefly. The rest of the chapter is devoted to an empirical study of the connection between transition type and the distribution of isochronous rhythm. Chapters VI and VII examine speech rhythm at sequence-external and sequence-internal junctures respectively. The last chapter, Chapter VIII, looks at speech rhythm in two activity sequences: questioning and repairing. 0378-2166/96/$15.00 © 1996ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved SSD1 0378-2166(95)000066-6
448
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 447~150
Couper-Kuhlen's approach to rhythm is innovative. Unlike previous researchers, she does not merely concentrate on examining the form of rhythm either auditorily or acoustically, but looks for its function in everyday interaction as well. To attain her goal, she combines phonetics and discourse analysis. She discards current metrical models as they fail to explain which syllables are stressed and which of these stressed ones construct rhythmic structures. She creates her own theory of rhythm. Couper-Kuhlen does not regard isochrony only as temporal regularity, but also as a phenomenon with non-durational characteristics. She employs Wertheimer's (1938a,b) theory of auditory gestalts to define them and lists a total of six possible features. First, prominent syllables are perceived proximal. The closer they come in time, the more salient the isochronous sequence is. Secondly, stressed syllables are identical in being equidistant in time. Thirdly, context influences the perception of isochrony. Fourthly, successive intervals with gradual shifts in tempo can be perceived isochronous. Fifthly, subsequent prominent syllables follow the timing pattern established in prior isochronous sequences. Sixthly and finally, at least three prominent syllables at equal intervals are needed to form a perceptually isochronous sequence, but they can come from more than one speaker. Couper-Kuhlen goes on to emphasize that, with the exception of the sixth one, these features are only preference rules, not well-formedness conditions. When they are strongly present, isochrony is very salient and vice versa. Besides, they seem to her to account for the concept of 'silent beat' more plausibly than any other approach to isochrony. According to Couper-Kuhlen, isochrony is not attached to any particular level of prosodic hierarchy, but is found from syllable to utterance level. She even manages to prove this empirically and shows that isochronous sequences can occur simultaneously at adjacent levels. She does, however, point out that "once a level of rhythmization is established, only prominences at this level are potential candidates for future beats" (p. 100). She also adds that a pause, intonation boundary or final lengthening does not necessarily break up a rhythmic structure, but too great an interval for the tempo does. Listeners do, in her opinion and according to her results, tolerate a certain amount of deviation; they are aware of the possible influences of transition spaces or intonation boundaries on tempo and can compensate for them. Similar tolerance phenomena have been presented by O'Connor (1965) and Lehiste (1977). Furthermore, Couper-Kuhlen suggests a two-phase method combining auditive and acoustic analysis for identifying isochronous sequences. She provides the reader with a detailed empirical demonstration of its application. The researcher's first task is to listen to the material - preferably with another native listener or other native listeners - and try to determine which syllables are stressed and which of them form isochronous sequences. Only after the material has been divided into isochronous and non-isochronous sequences, can the researcher start analysing them acoustically, i.e. measuring the intervals between the prominences and comparing them to each other. Couper-Kuhlen claims that using a purely acoustic method and ignoring the auditive part would not work since no research has been able to find one acoustic correlate for isochrony. She admits that perceptual centers (P-centers) introduced by Morton et al. in 1976 are plausible ones, but does not consider them fully operational
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 447--450
449
yet. This leads her to the conclusion that at the moment acoustic methods can only be used to validate auditive judgements. I agree. I find her method better and more easily applicable than Jassem et al.'s (1984). 1 When discussing the function of English speech rhythm, Couper-Kuhlen criticizes the current linear view of timing for being deficient and argues for a hierarchical, i.e. rhythm-based, view. She maintains that the latter provides the researcher a measuring device for judging whether turn-taking is well-timed or ill-timed. In addition, it explains better which pauses are salient and potentially informative and which ovelaps are significant for the interlocutors in their interpretation of the message. Convincing empirical evidence is also presented to support and illustrate this new view of timing. Couper-Kuhlen finds one significant - and very interesting - function for speech rhythm: that of a contextualization cue. In her opinion, rhythm contributes to the interpretation of talk together with the form and content of the utterances. Her conversational corpus provides numerous examples of this. Interlocutors negotiate rhythm and tempo from the very start of the conversation. They have "a set of timing options (integrated beats, delayed or late beats, anticipated and early beats) for coordinating the onset of tums ..." (p. 267). Rhythmic integration is usually the preferred, routine response and non-rhythmic the dispreferred, face-threatening one, but Couper-Kuhlen shows that this is not always the case. For example, synchronizing a dispreferred turn with a prior one forestalls the upcoming face-threats, and a delay is a preferred response to some kind of news. All in all, Couper-Kuhlen presents a plausible and welcome theory, which seems to solve many problems of the previous ones. We are finally given well-argued answers to the questions what isochrony really is, why it is so difficult to identify acoustically and how it actually functions in interaction. Couper-Kuhlen manages this skillfully by providing the reader with ample evidence from authentic conversational material to support her claims. Her examples are clear and illustrative; her arguments are well-formed and exhaustive. Couper-Kuhlen redeems her promises: she succeeds in reaching the goals she has set herself in the introduction, e Couper-Kuhlen also sees the defects of her theory and does not insist it is completely ready. She admits in the conclusion that more reseach is needed to test her theory and possibly to improve it. Now it has only been tested in one kind of English and should - according to her - be tested in other varieties of English and in other languages to see whether rhythm is as fundamental and diversified a cue in them as in the English of her corpus. One other application field which she does not mention might be Second Language Acquisiton (SLA) research. Many SLA
1 Jassem divides rhythm units into two types: Narrow Rhythm Units (NRU) and Anacrusis (ANA). His acoustic method examines "the relations between the length of a rhythm unit and that of the consituent phones" (Jassem et al., 1984: 210). For this purpose he establishes 18 classes of phones and uses different kinds of regression analyses. 2 "The contribution of this work is intended to be threefold: (i) to propose a perceptually realistic method of identifying and verifying isochrony ... ; (ii) to advocate and assemble proof for a rhythmbased metric of turn-taking ..., (iii) to further an understanding of prosodic contextualization ..." (p. 2).
450
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 447-450
researchers (see e.g. Brown, 1990; G i m s o n , 1989; M o r r i s - W i l s o n , 1981; O ' C o n n o r 1982; Lehtonen et al., 1977) have realized the i m p o r t a n c e o f r h y t h m in conversation and the c o m p r e h e n s i o n p r o b l e m s that arise from false rhythm, but few o f them have tested it in detail. At least I m y s e l f am going to a p p l y C o u p e r - K u h l e n ' s m e t h o d to m y S L A research and hope that there will be m o r e o f us in the future.
References Brown, Gillian, 1990. Listening to spoken English [Second edition]. London: Longman. Ellis, Willis D., 1938. A source book of gestalt psychology. London: Routledge. Gimson, A.C., 1989. An introduction to the pronunciation of English [Fourth edition]. London: Edward Arnold. Jassem, W., D.R. Hill and I.H. Witten, 1984. Isochrony in English speech: Its statistical validity and linguistic relevance. In: Dafydd Gibbon and Helmut Richter, eds., Intonation, accent and rhythm: Studies in discourse phonology, 203-225. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lehiste, Ilse, 1977. Isochrony reconsidered. Journal of Phonetics 55: 253-263. Lehtonen, J., K. Sajavaara and A. May, 1977. Spoken English: The perception and production of English on a Finnish-English contrastive basis. Jyvaskyla: Gummerus. Morris-Wilson, Ian, 1981. An introduction to English segmental phonetics for Finns. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.
Morton, John, Steve Marcus and Clive Frankish, 1976. Perceptual centers (P-centers). Psychological Review 83: 405-408. O'Connor, J.D., 1965. The perception of time intervals. Progress Report 2, 11-15. Phonetics Laboratory, University College London. O'Connor, J.D., 1982. Better English pronunciation [New edition]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertheimer, Max, 1938a. Laws of organization in perceptual forms. In: Willis D. Ellis, ed., 1938, 1-11. Wertheimer, Max, 1938b. Gestalt theory. In: Willis D. Ellis, ed., 1938, 71-88.
Journal of Pragmatics25 (1996) 447-450
Book review Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, English speech rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 25. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1993. 346 pp. US $ 75.00. Reviewed by Minna M. Paananen, Department of English, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 4, SF-0004 Helsinki, Finland. The question whether English speech rhythm is isochronous or not, i.e. whether stresses tend to be placed at roughly regular time intervals or not, has been the topic of an endless debate among linguists all over the world. Two competing schools have grown out of this issue: believers and disbelievers. The former believe that English speech rhythm is fundamentlly isochronous, at least perceptually, whereas the latter doubt that isochrony exists in English at all because instrumental experiments have not yielded any evidence for it. For the disbelievers isochrony is then just "a figment of the linguist's imagination" (p. 11). Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen disagrees and takes a compromise view on this matter in her latest book about the form and function of English speech rhythm. She admits that there are perceptually isochronous sequences in English conversation, but points out that non-isochronous sequences may occur as well and that both sequence types have a function in interaction. As the subtitle already implies, Couper-Kuhlen's book consists of two parts. The first part, i.e. the first four chapters, deals with phonetic and phonological features of English speech rhythm. Chapter I outlines the debate about isochrony and discusses one plausible solution to it: perceptual centers (P-centers). Chapter II shows by means of examples how perceptual isochrony can be discovered auditorily and verified acoustically. Chapter III presents other current models of speech rhythm and contrasts speech rhythm with music and verse. Chapter IV looks at the weaknesses in the linear treatment of time and timing in turn-taking and suggests a hierarchical approach based on rhythm instead. The second part of the book starts in Chapter V where the focus shifts to the function of English speech rhythm. Two accounts for synchronized timing in verbal inleraction - rhythm as temporal congruence and rhythm as contextualization cue - are reviewed briefly. The rest of the chapter is devoted to an empirical study of the connection between transition type and the distribution of isochronous rhythm. Chapters VI and VII examine speech rhythm at sequence-external and sequence-internal junctures respectively. The last chapter, Chapter VIII, looks at speech rhythm in two activity sequences: questioning and repairing. 0378-2166/96/$15.00 © 1996ElsevierScienceB.V. All rightsreserved SSD1 0378-2166(95)000066-6
448
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 447~150
Couper-Kuhlen's approach to rhythm is innovative. Unlike previous researchers, she does not merely concentrate on examining the form of rhythm either auditorily or acoustically, but looks for its function in everyday interaction as well. To attain her goal, she combines phonetics and discourse analysis. She discards current metrical models as they fail to explain which syllables are stressed and which of these stressed ones construct rhythmic structures. She creates her own theory of rhythm. Couper-Kuhlen does not regard isochrony only as temporal regularity, but also as a phenomenon with non-durational characteristics. She employs Wertheimer's (1938a,b) theory of auditory gestalts to define them and lists a total of six possible features. First, prominent syllables are perceived proximal. The closer they come in time, the more salient the isochronous sequence is. Secondly, stressed syllables are identical in being equidistant in time. Thirdly, context influences the perception of isochrony. Fourthly, successive intervals with gradual shifts in tempo can be perceived isochronous. Fifthly, subsequent prominent syllables follow the timing pattern established in prior isochronous sequences. Sixthly and finally, at least three prominent syllables at equal intervals are needed to form a perceptually isochronous sequence, but they can come from more than one speaker. Couper-Kuhlen goes on to emphasize that, with the exception of the sixth one, these features are only preference rules, not well-formedness conditions. When they are strongly present, isochrony is very salient and vice versa. Besides, they seem to her to account for the concept of 'silent beat' more plausibly than any other approach to isochrony. According to Couper-Kuhlen, isochrony is not attached to any particular level of prosodic hierarchy, but is found from syllable to utterance level. She even manages to prove this empirically and shows that isochronous sequences can occur simultaneously at adjacent levels. She does, however, point out that "once a level of rhythmization is established, only prominences at this level are potential candidates for future beats" (p. 100). She also adds that a pause, intonation boundary or final lengthening does not necessarily break up a rhythmic structure, but too great an interval for the tempo does. Listeners do, in her opinion and according to her results, tolerate a certain amount of deviation; they are aware of the possible influences of transition spaces or intonation boundaries on tempo and can compensate for them. Similar tolerance phenomena have been presented by O'Connor (1965) and Lehiste (1977). Furthermore, Couper-Kuhlen suggests a two-phase method combining auditive and acoustic analysis for identifying isochronous sequences. She provides the reader with a detailed empirical demonstration of its application. The researcher's first task is to listen to the material - preferably with another native listener or other native listeners - and try to determine which syllables are stressed and which of them form isochronous sequences. Only after the material has been divided into isochronous and non-isochronous sequences, can the researcher start analysing them acoustically, i.e. measuring the intervals between the prominences and comparing them to each other. Couper-Kuhlen claims that using a purely acoustic method and ignoring the auditive part would not work since no research has been able to find one acoustic correlate for isochrony. She admits that perceptual centers (P-centers) introduced by Morton et al. in 1976 are plausible ones, but does not consider them fully operational
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 447--450
449
yet. This leads her to the conclusion that at the moment acoustic methods can only be used to validate auditive judgements. I agree. I find her method better and more easily applicable than Jassem et al.'s (1984). 1 When discussing the function of English speech rhythm, Couper-Kuhlen criticizes the current linear view of timing for being deficient and argues for a hierarchical, i.e. rhythm-based, view. She maintains that the latter provides the researcher a measuring device for judging whether turn-taking is well-timed or ill-timed. In addition, it explains better which pauses are salient and potentially informative and which ovelaps are significant for the interlocutors in their interpretation of the message. Convincing empirical evidence is also presented to support and illustrate this new view of timing. Couper-Kuhlen finds one significant - and very interesting - function for speech rhythm: that of a contextualization cue. In her opinion, rhythm contributes to the interpretation of talk together with the form and content of the utterances. Her conversational corpus provides numerous examples of this. Interlocutors negotiate rhythm and tempo from the very start of the conversation. They have "a set of timing options (integrated beats, delayed or late beats, anticipated and early beats) for coordinating the onset of tums ..." (p. 267). Rhythmic integration is usually the preferred, routine response and non-rhythmic the dispreferred, face-threatening one, but Couper-Kuhlen shows that this is not always the case. For example, synchronizing a dispreferred turn with a prior one forestalls the upcoming face-threats, and a delay is a preferred response to some kind of news. All in all, Couper-Kuhlen presents a plausible and welcome theory, which seems to solve many problems of the previous ones. We are finally given well-argued answers to the questions what isochrony really is, why it is so difficult to identify acoustically and how it actually functions in interaction. Couper-Kuhlen manages this skillfully by providing the reader with ample evidence from authentic conversational material to support her claims. Her examples are clear and illustrative; her arguments are well-formed and exhaustive. Couper-Kuhlen redeems her promises: she succeeds in reaching the goals she has set herself in the introduction, e Couper-Kuhlen also sees the defects of her theory and does not insist it is completely ready. She admits in the conclusion that more reseach is needed to test her theory and possibly to improve it. Now it has only been tested in one kind of English and should - according to her - be tested in other varieties of English and in other languages to see whether rhythm is as fundamental and diversified a cue in them as in the English of her corpus. One other application field which she does not mention might be Second Language Acquisiton (SLA) research. Many SLA
1 Jassem divides rhythm units into two types: Narrow Rhythm Units (NRU) and Anacrusis (ANA). His acoustic method examines "the relations between the length of a rhythm unit and that of the consituent phones" (Jassem et al., 1984: 210). For this purpose he establishes 18 classes of phones and uses different kinds of regression analyses. 2 "The contribution of this work is intended to be threefold: (i) to propose a perceptually realistic method of identifying and verifying isochrony ... ; (ii) to advocate and assemble proof for a rhythmbased metric of turn-taking ..., (iii) to further an understanding of prosodic contextualization ..." (p. 2).
450
Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 25 (1996) 447-450
researchers (see e.g. Brown, 1990; G i m s o n , 1989; M o r r i s - W i l s o n , 1981; O ' C o n n o r 1982; Lehtonen et al., 1977) have realized the i m p o r t a n c e o f r h y t h m in conversation and the c o m p r e h e n s i o n p r o b l e m s that arise from false rhythm, but few o f them have tested it in detail. At least I m y s e l f am going to a p p l y C o u p e r - K u h l e n ' s m e t h o d to m y S L A research and hope that there will be m o r e o f us in the future.
References Brown, Gillian, 1990. Listening to spoken English [Second edition]. London: Longman. Ellis, Willis D., 1938. A source book of gestalt psychology. London: Routledge. Gimson, A.C., 1989. An introduction to the pronunciation of English [Fourth edition]. London: Edward Arnold. Jassem, W., D.R. Hill and I.H. Witten, 1984. Isochrony in English speech: Its statistical validity and linguistic relevance. In: Dafydd Gibbon and Helmut Richter, eds., Intonation, accent and rhythm: Studies in discourse phonology, 203-225. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lehiste, Ilse, 1977. Isochrony reconsidered. Journal of Phonetics 55: 253-263. Lehtonen, J., K. Sajavaara and A. May, 1977. Spoken English: The perception and production of English on a Finnish-English contrastive basis. Jyvaskyla: Gummerus. Morris-Wilson, Ian, 1981. An introduction to English segmental phonetics for Finns. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.
Morton, John, Steve Marcus and Clive Frankish, 1976. Perceptual centers (P-centers). Psychological Review 83: 405-408. O'Connor, J.D., 1965. The perception of time intervals. Progress Report 2, 11-15. Phonetics Laboratory, University College London. O'Connor, J.D., 1982. Better English pronunciation [New edition]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertheimer, Max, 1938a. Laws of organization in perceptual forms. In: Willis D. Ellis, ed., 1938, 1-11. Wertheimer, Max, 1938b. Gestalt theory. In: Willis D. Ellis, ed., 1938, 71-88.