This paper reintroduces the discussion about stress-timing in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). It begins by surveying some phonetic and phonological issues raised by the syllable<FONT FACE=Symbol>-</FONT> vs stress-timed dichotomy which culminated with the emergence of the p-center notion. Strict considerations of timing of V-V units and stress groups are taken into account to analyze the long term coupling of two basic oscillators (vowel and stress flow). This coupling allows a two-parameter characterization of language rhythms (coupling strength and speech rate) revealing that BP utterances present a high-degree of syllable-timing. A comparison with other languages, including European Portuguese, is also presented. The results analyzed indicate that Major's arguments for considering Portuguese (sic) as stress-timing are misleading.
Rhythm Typology; Coupled Oscillators; Duration; Brazilian Portuguese
