stress-timed (adj.)

A very general term used in PHONETICS to characterize the pronunciation of LANGUAGES displaying a particular type of RHYTHM; it is opposed to SYLLABLE-TIMED languages. In stress-timed languages, it is claimed that the STRESSED SYLLABLES recur at regular intervals of time (stress-timing), regardless of the number of intervening unstressed syllables, as in English. This characteristic is referred to as ‘isochronism’, or ISOCHRONY. However, it is plain that this regularity is the case only under certain conditions, and the extent to which the tendency towards regularity in English is similar to that in, say, other Germanic languages remains unclear.