The Effects of Phonological Structure on the Acoustic Correlates of Rhythm

The relationship between the %V, ΔC, and ΔV metrics of rhythm and the phonological characteristics they are generally believed to relate to is directly investigated. A cross-linguistically diverse sample of languages is examined to determine whether languages which pattern similarly according to phonological features, including range of allowable syllable structure, presence of phonemic vowel length contrast, and presence of vowel reduction, necessarily pattern similarly in their measured %V, ΔC, and ΔV values. Of these features, syllable structure is found to have a significant effect on the indices ΔC and %V and vowel length contrast is found to have a significant effect on the variability index ΔV. Vowel reduction has no significant effect on the metrics.