Language Isochrony, Applied

Language Isochrony (Rhythm, Prosody, Stress-timed, Syllable-timed, and Mora-timed are some related terms) is studied by Linguists but is also relevant to applied fields such as Interpretation and Language Teaching. The topic is also related to Human Evolution and to Cognitive Science. English is a stress-timed language. Japanese is a mora-timed language (a mora is a unit of stress and timing that is below the level of the syllable). The tonal language Cantonese is a syllable- timed language and the tonal language Mandarin falls on a continuum between syllable-timed and stress-timed. A language learner will normally, implicitly try to apply the language isochrony characteristics of his or her first language to the task of internalizing the new vocabulary and structures. Instructors of TESL and of languages should learn and apply some of the basics of Language Isochrony in their work. Similarly, interpreters. A critical aspect of an interpreter’s work is rendering ‘units of meaning’ in to the second language and saving time (at the subsecond level) is an important concern. So things such as rhythm and stress are important. In the talk, the literature will be presented and reviewed, and results from some of my specific investigations will also be presented. Samples from English and Mandarin, and from some Mandarin Tongue Twisters and other spoken forms will be modeled and analyzed in the context