Abercrombie (1967: 96) remarks that “all human speech possesses rhythm”. The rhythm of a
language is mainly constituted by the way the language uses stresses (sometimes called
rhythmic beats) and accents (or pitch prominences). Bertrán (1999: 126) reminds the reader
that “in linguistics, the word rhythm is a metaphor, borrowed from music”. If a music had no
rhythm, then it could not be called “music”, and that is exactly the same for the rhythm of a
language. If it is not correctly produced, native listeners will not recognize their language.
That is why the respect of a language’s rhythm is crucial in the learning of the L2
pronunciation.
According to Cruttenden (1997), English rhythm has three degrees of stress/accent: (a)
primary stress/accent – called “nucleus” above – is the principal pitch prominence; (b)
secondary stress/accent is a subsidiary pitch prominence, and is often called the “onset”, i.e.
the first stressed syllable of an IP; (c) tertiary stress (not “accent” this time, as it is not a pitch
prominence) corresponds to the rhythmic stresses of the IP, that is, in the head or tail. In
Wells’s (2006: 229) terms, this third type of stress is said to be “downgraded” in rapid, casual
speech, according to the “rule of three”; the rhythmic stresses between the onset accent and
the nuclear accent are pronounced rapidly along with the other unstressed syllables.
However, it is necessary for French EFL learners to know about the traditional alternation
between stressed and unstressed syllables, especially because it is also linked to segmentals
(i.e. weak forms and strong forms) that French speakers are not familiar with (Mortreux,
2008).
The notion of “foot” given by Halliday (1967: 12) is defined as the component of English
rhythm. Contrary to the foot in poetry, here the foot is a unit of rhythm that consists of an
ictus – one stressed syllable –, and a remiss – the following unstressed syllable(s) before the
next stressed syllable. The rhythm of English is produced by a succession of feet, i.e. of
stressed and unstressed syllables (Abercrombie, 1967: 36). Then, what is a source of difficulty
for French learners is to know what to stress (content words: nouns, verbs, adverbs,
adjective, and demonstratives, question words, etc.), and what is unstressed (function words:
pronouns, articles, conjunctions, etc.). The French system is indeed very different, as has
already been seen with lexical stress. Ploquin (2009: 94) explains that “French differs from
Latin and other Romance languages in that its stress domain is the phrase rather than the
word”. Therefore, when learning English as a foreign language, French learners must
become aware of the difference between the rhythm of their L1 and that of the target
language. The interference of the L1 as far as rhythm is concerned is such that Hahn (2004)
believes that it cannot be avoided. While rhythm is among the earliest things that are
acquired by infants, it is one of the most difficult things for adults to modify when they learn
a foreign language.
Very often, suprasegmental errors lead to segmental errors, e.g. when an error of stress
assignment prevents vowel reduction from occurring naturally (cf. words like village).
Rhythm and prosody are the basic structure of a language, but they are also among the most
difficult features to acquire for an L2 learner. The big differences between the English and
French prosodic systems are at the origin of the difficulties that French EFL learners come
across. The difference between the two languages, and the resulting errors of production, can
be illustrated by the stress-timing and syllable-timing theory.