pavlaks Definition

Pavlaks is a term derived from the name of the linguist Pavlos Demetriou, used in academic contexts to describe a particular hypothesis or linguistic theory about stress and timing in speech. It refers to the idea that certain stressed syllables in a word are pronounced longer than others, even when they are followed by unstressed syllables, which is called the 'pavlaks effect'. This concept is crucial in understanding stress-timing in languages like English.