Measures of native and non-native rhythm in a quantity language

language The traditional phonetic classification of language rhythm as stress-timed learners or syllable-timed is attributed to Pike. Recently, two different proposals have been offered for describing the rhythmic structure of languages from Latvian acoustic-phonetic measurements. Ramus has suggested a metric based on the proportion of vocalic intervals and the variability (SD) of consonantal rhythm intervals. Grabe has proposed Pairwise Variability Indices (nPVI rPVI) rythm calculated from the differences in vocalic and consonantal durations between successive syllables. We have calculated both the Ramus and Grabe metrics for Russian Latvian, traditionally considered a syllable rhythm language, and for Latvian as spoken by Russian learners. Native speakers and proficient learners were very similar whereas low-proficiency learners showed high variability on some properties. The metrics did not provide an unambiguous classification of Latvian.