An acoustic study of rhythmic synchronization with natural English speech

•A sensorimotor synchronisation method is tested to study rhythm of natural (English) speech.•Acoustic and linguistic landmarks are examined with regards to their ability to attract and anchor stable rhythmic movement.•Best anchors include nucleus onsets and moments of fast local energy change (derived by a previously developed algorithm of the P-center).•Syllables with vocalic and consonantal nuclei are both shown to attract and anchor rhythmic movement.•Neither F0 nor phonological tune specifications influence rhythmic performance in this task.