Language Design 2 (1999, 103-130) Prosodic Typology: On the Dichotomy between Stress-Timed and Syllable-Timed Languages ANTONIO PAMIES BERTRÁN University of Granada 1. Introduction In 1945 Kenneth L. Pike suggested a basis for the typological classification of languages which met with a widespread approval in phonological and prosodic studies. We are referring here to the dichotomy between syllable-timed vs. stress-timed languages. Both kinds of “linguistic rhythm” are characterised by the recurrence of a given element at regular intervals. However, in certain languages the element is a stressed vowel (accentuated feet of greater or lesser duration) whereas in other languages, the element is the limit of the syllable (syllables of greater or lesser duration). Both categories are regarded as being mutually exclusive. English is the stress-timed language par excellence and Spanish is one of the languages that Pike refers to as a prototypically syllable-timed languages. Trubetskoy (1938) had already described this opposition between languages that count syllables and languages that count morae, but he didn't develop it. Much work in experimental phonetics is based on Pike’s ideas, the objective of which is the classification of languages according to their rhythm, and the elaboration of a general rhythmic typology. Important work done by Abercrombie (1967), Hockett (1958), Ladefoged (1967, 1975), Catford (1977), O’Connor (1973) and Allen (1975), among others, has contributed to the general acceptance of this theory. The language classifications proposed usually include English, Russian, all Germanic languages, and Arabic among the languages of accentual isochrony (stress-timed) (Pike 1945; Abercombie 1967, Bolinger 1965, Hockett 1958, Halliday 1967, Ladefoged 1967, O’Connor 1973, Smith 1976, and Lehiste 1973, 1977. Among the languages of syllabic isochrony the usual prototypes tend to be French (Abercrombie