Measuring rhythm. Is it separable from speech rate?

Rhythm is no longer regarded as a language primitive but rather as an emergent property, the product of phonological structure and phonetic realisation. It is therefore measurable and continous, not discrete. Recently proposed "rhythm" measures related to the durational variability of vowels and consonantal intervals have been shown to be successful in rhythmically classifying read speech from a number of languages. This study presents a comparative rhythm analysis of spontaneous Italian and German. The rhythm measures show strong fluctuation, but the overall language effect remains significant, albeit in a direction contrary to what tradition typology predicts. Some of the factors underlying the fluctuation, in particular articulation rate, are discussed