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the wiki article on syllable-timed languages says the following

Syllable-timed languages tend to give syllables approximately equal prominence and generally lack reduced vowels.

Are there any syllable-timed language(s) that has reduced vowels?.

LinguisticsFanatic
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1 Answers1

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Almost by definition, there cannot be. If every syllable in a syllable-timed language has the same duration, then a change from vowel A to vowel B would not be reduction (which applies to "weak" vowels), it would be something else, such as "dissimilation" (an example is Woleaian). Lehiste (1977) ("Isochrony reconsidered") has a different, more gradient view of "syllable-timed", where there are detectable tendencies across languages for timing to aim for consistency in moras, syllables of stress-feet, but there is how a sharp trichotomy between three kinds of languages. Accordingly (and at the same time and place), Major in his dissertation on Brazilian Portuguese prosody provides evidence for an elements of syllable-timing in that language. This work by Nobre & Ingemann shows that in Brazilian Portuguese, there is also stress-sensitive vowel reduction. So languages do exist demonstrably with both properties. The main challenge in finding examples is that proving that a language is syllable-timed is very difficult.

user6726
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    There are languages that merge various vowels in unstressed syllables (e.g., only /o a i/ can appear there) – that is often considered a form of vowel reduction, even if it doesn’t reduce the length of the syllable. Can’t think of any such languages that would also be syllable-timed off the top of my head, but there’s no reason they couldn’t exist. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 29 '22 at 00:14
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    How syllable-timed do you consider Italian? (I've seen assessments vary quite a lot!) The pairs of vowels /e/ and /ɛ/, /o/ and /ɔ/ are distinguished only in stressed syllables, being usually assigned as /e/ and /o/ in unstressed syllables (but I see no reason why the actual pronunciation couldn't vary and be intermediate). – LjL Aug 29 '22 at 01:02
  • The wiki article mentions French as syllable-timed, and there's French petit “small” which is /pə.ti/, /p.ti/ with the first vowel able to be reduced practically to zero. – Yellow Sky Sep 06 '22 at 02:20