On cortical mechanisms of rhythmic interference in non-native speech

The present article is aimed at describing linguistic and cortical mechanisms of language and speech interference with a focus on rhythmic elements of sound speech. The role of cortical mechanisms in sound speech communication is only commencing to be understood by different scientists. In turn, verbal communication itself can be described as a dy-namic quasi-regular and regular transformation of linguistic and extra-linguistic units. Some linguistic (rhythmic) inter-ference phenomena, dealing with “negative language material” (L. V. Shcherba), play an extremely significant role both in linguistics and in some related fields of scientific knowledge. Rhythm (verbal and non-verbal) can be defined, on the one hand, as a form of moving and structuring matter, on the other hand, as an omnipresent peculiarity of living and non-living matter along with time and space. It is noted that verbal rhythm, being part of universal rhythm, is formed by means of all linguistic strata and all their units and features (graphic, phonetic, morphological, syntactic, etc.). It is also emphasised that any rhythmic system exists in the linguistic hierarchically structured pattern, that is to say, it can-not be referred only to prosodic, lexical, or semantic structures. The main features of rhythmic patterning of native and non-native English speech are analysed. It seems to indicate more deeply some of the issues related to phonetic scienc-es in general and verbal and non-verbal rhythmology in particular in keeping with the framework of neurophonetic theory and multi-paradigmatic approach to any linguistic code.