length (n.)

A term used in PHONETICS to refer to the physical duration of a sound or UTTERANCE, and in PHONOLOGY to refer to the relative DURATIONS of sounds and SYLLABLES when these are linguistically contrastive; also referred to as QUANTITY. Sometimes the term is restricted to phonological contexts, the phonetic dimension being referred to as ‘duration’. Phonologically long and short values are conventionally recognized, for both VOWELS and CONSONANTS. LANGUAGES often have one degree of phonological length, and may have more than one. Long vowels (transcribed with the DIACRITIC [:]) occur in Arabic and Finnish, long consonants (or double consonants) in Italian and Luganda. A further contrast of length (over-long or extra-long) is also sometimes encountered with vowels. In English, the so-called distinction between long and short vowels (as in beat/bit) is not strictly a contrast in length, as QUALITY variations are always involved.

The notion of physical length has also been used in PSYCHOLINGUISTIC, SOCIOLINGUISTIC and STYLISTIC studies of GRAMMAR and VOCABULARY, in an attempt to quantify variations in the apparent COMPLEXITY of SENTENCES, WORDS, etc. Notions such as sentence length and mean length of utterance have been studied in terms of the number of CONSTITUENT words, MORPHEMES, SYLLABLES, etc., which they contain. These quantifications have been criticized by many LINGUISTS, on the grounds that there is no necessary correlation between the length of a linguistic UNIT and its STRUCTURAL or FUNCTIONAL COMPLEXITY.