Estonian rhythm and the Pairwise Variability Index

The Pairwise Variability Index (PVI), a measure of how much unit-to-unit variation there is in speech, has been used as a correlate of rhythmic impressions such as ‘syllable-timed’ and ‘stress-timed’. Grabe and Low (2002) included Estonian among a number of languages for which they calculated the durational PVI for vowels and for intervocalic intervals, but other than that Estonian rhythm has not been studied within recent approaches to rhythm calculation. The pilot experiment reported in this paper compares the use of various speech units for the characterisation of Estonian speech rhythm. It is concluded that the durational PVI of the syllable and of the foot are more appropriate for capturing the rhythmic complexity of Estonian, and might provide a subtle tool for characterising languages in general.