The kinds of rhythmical variation I will examine in this paper can be observed in some double-accented Hungarian words, and can be exemplified by the changes that the stressing of the numeric compound ′tizen′három ‘thirteen’ may undergo when it is embedded in phrases. The stressing of this word may become tizen′három in the phrase ′pont tizen′három ‘exactly thirteen’ and ′ tizen′három in the phrase ′ tizen′három ′pont ‘thirteen points’. The two processes, however, are not quite symmetrical in their range of application; the first kind of change occurs in only a subset of the words affected by the second kind. The symbol ′ in the examples represents a pitch accent on the syllable whose orthographic form it precedes.

These changes are the Hungarian counterparts of the two kinds of rhythmical variation in English, manifested, for instance, by the different realisations of the word ′thir′teen, when it is embedded in phrases like ′thirteen ′points or ′just thir′teen. However, while rhythmical variation in English is extremely widespread, in Hungarian it is restricted to certain classes of words. Besides, rhythmical variation in English lacks the asymmetry between the two processes; both kinds of change affect the same set of words.

This article concentrates on rhythmical variation in Hungarian and on the implications of this variation for metrical theory.