Phonotactic and phrasal properties of speech rhythm. Evidence from Catalan, English, and Spanish q Pilar Prieto a,⇑ , Maria del Mar Vanrell b , Lluı ¨sa Astruc c , Elinor Payne d , Brechtje Post e a ICREA - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Carrer Roc Boronat, 138, Despatx 51.600, 08018 Barcelona, Spain b Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Carrer Roc Boronat, 138, Despatx 51.012, 08018 Barcelona, Spain c Department of Languages,Faculty of Languages and Language Studies, The Open University, Walton Hall,Milton Keynes MK7 6AA,United Kingdom d Phonetics Lab, University of Oxford, 41 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JF, United Kingdom e Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Raised Faculty Building, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 4DA, UK Received 29 December 2009; received in revised form 1 December 2011; accepted 2 December 2011 Available online 16 December 2011 Abstract The goal of this study is twofold: first, to examine in greater depth the claimed contribution of differences in syllable structure to mea- sures of speech rhythm for three languages that are reported to belong to different rhythmic classes, namely, English, Spanish, and Cat- alan; and second, to investigate differences in the durational marking of prosodic heads and final edges of prosodic constituents between the three languages and test whether this distinction correlates in any way with the rhythmic distinctions. Data from a total of 24 speak- ers reading 720 utterances from these three languages show that differences in the rhythm metrics emerge even when syllable structure is controlled for in the experimental materials, at least between English on the one hand and Spanish/Catalan on the other, suggesting that important differences in durational patterns exist between these languages that cannot simply be attributed to differences in phonotactic properties. In particular, the vocalic variability measures nPVI-V, DV, and VarcoV are shown to be robust tools for discrimination above and beyond such phonotactic properties. Further analyses of the data indicate that the rhythmic class distinctions under consideration finely correlate with differences in the way these languages instantiate two prosodic timing processes, namely, the durational marking of prosodic heads, and pre-final lengthening at prosodic boundaries. Ó 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Rhythm; Rhythm index measures; Accentual lengthening; Final lengthening; Spanish language; Catalan language; English language 0167-6393/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2011.12.001 q Earlier versions of this study were presented at the Workshop on Empirical Approaches to Speech Rhythm (28 March 2008, University College London, UK), at Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia 2009 (17–19 June 2009, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain), and at Speech Prosody 2010 (11–14 May 2010, Chicago, USA). We are grateful to the audience at these three conferences, and especially to M. D’Imperio, S. Frota, J.I. Hualde, F. Nolan, and L. White for fruitful discussions on some of the issues raised in this article. We also thank the action editor Jan van Santen and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. The idea for conducting the first experiment stems from an informal conversation with J.I. Hualde. We would like to thank N. Argemı ´, A. Barbera ` , M. Bell, A. Estrella, and F. Torres-Tamarit for recording the data in the three languages, and to N. Hilton and P. Roseano for carrying out the segmentation and coding of the data. Special thanks are due to F. Ramus et al. for making available to us the sentences used in their 1999 paper. This research has been funded by two Batista i Roca research projects entitled “The acquisition of rhythm in Catalan, Spanish and English” and “The acquisition of intonation in Catalan, Spanish and English” (Refs. 2007 PBR 29 and 2009 PBR 00018, respectively) awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya, by the project “A cross-linguistic study of intonational development in young infants and children” awarded by the British Academy (Ref. SG-51777), and by the projects FFI2009-07648/FILO and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 “Bilingu ¨ismo y Neurociencia Cognitiva CSD2007-00012” awarded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacio ´n, and 2009 SGR 701, awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 93 542 22 48; fax: +34 93 542 16 17. E-mail address: pilar.prieto@upf.edu (P. Prieto). www.elsevier.com/locate/specom Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Speech Communication 54 (2012) 681–702