Spontaneous talk

Prose

Verse

Rhythm of verse and prose

Within the study of spoken language phonetics needs to be able to describe the phonetic substance of any communicative aspect of speech. We will now need to describe the stylistic aspect of communication in which segmental and suprasegmental phonetic features of speech all play a role.

The key concept is rhythm understood as regularity, or periodicity, of similar events. Our task is to see how speech rhythm is created, and why it is important for style differentiation as well as the prosodic arrangement of the text. It is interesting to find properties of speech rhythm common with our biological rhythms, such as heartbeat and breathing. It may give us awareness of things of art in music, painting and architecture appealing to our sense of harmony and be, therefore, more aesthetically satisfactory. And, last but not least, it is good to know how elements of speech rhythm affect human perception of speech and may be successfully employed by anyone in possession of the skills.

Rhythm was first described in poetics. The laws of versification includ­ed such means of rhythmic arrangement as meter (iamb or chorea, for example), rhyme, including inner rhyme (within a line), caesurae, lines, stanzas, lexical repetition, syntactical parallelism, assonance (repetition of similar vowels), alliteration (repetition of similar consonants). In a classical poem one could find as many as 15 rhythm-creating features, while in free verse their number dropped to three. To illustrate just a few features: a) feet, assonance, rhyme, lexical repetitions, lines which rhyme in a stanza to the pattern of ABAB, the number of feet in lines is mirrored in ABBA pattern:

'Sweet, 'sweet is the 'greeting of eyes, And sweet is the voice in its greeting, When a'dieux have grown old and good-'byes 'Fade away where old 'time is retreating.

(John Keats)

b) alliteration, meter, rhyme, inner rhyme, lines with equal number of syllables,^-syntactic parallelisms, stanza:

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, ’'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is and nothing more.

(Edgar Allan Рое)

c) free verse with feet and lines left as the two features common with verse structure and tone groups of similar length to evoke the sensation of rhythmical prose, or even a conversation:

This sea will never die, neither will it ever grow old

nor cease to be blue, nor in the dawn

cease to lift up its hills

and let the slim black ship of Dionysos come sailing in

with grape-vines up the mast, and dolphins leaping.

What do I care if the smoking ships

of the P. & O. and the Orient Line and all other stinkers

cross like clock-work the Minoan distance!

They only cross, the distance never changes.

(D.H. Lawrence)

What are the minimal characteristics of verse which still provide its rhythmic identity in free verse? The basic rhythmic units of verse are:

foot - a stressed syllable with the unstressed syllables (called clitics) that either precede it (proclitics) or follow it (enclitics),

line — a graphic representation of one or two intonation groups, normally with an equal number of feet in them,

stanza - part of the poem with a fixed number of lines, in a classical verse with a patterned order of rhymes between the lines.

When a piece of verse is read aloud, there are other prosodic features which accompany the basic rhythmic units and enhance the rhythmic effect. They are combinations of prosodic features which mark the beginning and end of feet, lines and stanzas as well as their recurring melodic and dynamic patterns and voice quality features. The beginning of each unit is brought out by maximal pitch and intensity values, while the end is accompanied by a relative drop of pitch and intensity, which is especially noticeable at the end of a line. Besides, a line normally finishes with slowing down of tempo and a pause; in case it coincides with the end of stanza, the pause is longer. The pitch patterns are noted for declination and levelled out falling tones, loudness is diminished, voice quality is husky.

There are three major generalizations we can make about rhythmic units:

(1)rhythmic units constitute a hierarchy: each bigger unit consists of a number of smaller units (foot, line, stanza);

(2)in reading aloud all the prosodic features (pitch, intensity, tempo, pause and voice quality) take part: they indicate the boundaries and pattern the basic units of rhythm;

(3)a few prosodic features of reading verse are style-specific, for example, levelled out tones, diminished loudness, husky voice quality.

It was only when the analysis of prose rhythm was started that it was found to what extent the above generalizations hold good for all kinds of speech. Experimental phonetics gives evidence to what scholars of syntax have defined intuitively. Rhythm has been discovered even in everyday spontaneous talk (Antipova 1984).

What are the basic units of rhythm in prose read aloud? They are:

rhythmic group (other names are stress-group, accent group, foot),

intonation group (other names are tone unit, syntagma),

supraphrasal unit (other names are speech paragraph, theme unit, topic).

Naming practically identical units by different names in verse and prose is a matter of convention. Traditionally, the term "foot" as a unit containing one stress was applied to verse in poetics. However, in 1964 David Abercrombie started to use it to both conversation and spoken prose structures {Abercrombie 1964). The new convention has been revived by metrical phonology {Liberman 1975) and in more recent studies of intonation {Hirst and Di Cristo 1998). So we are free to call the basic unit of rhythm as we choose, "foot" or "rhythmic group"; the second larger unit is either an "intonation group" or "tone unit". With the next, largest unit it will be more difficult to break the tradition of "stanza" applied to verse and "supraphrasal unity" as applied to prose.

However, one thing is quite clear: the hierarchy principle and the prosody rhythm-forming function are both valid for prose, verse and even spontaneous talk, although in each mode of speech there are specific style-forming means. We will consider them now.

It is necessary to note here that apart from the basic units of rhythm there are other units which may come to the fore in particular texts with greater regularity. It was found, for instance, that a long sentence in prose which consists of a number of intonation groups and practically functions as a supraphrasal unity falls into smaller periods uniting intonation groups by two or three. These shorter periods are marked off by an overall rise and drop of pitch and by a pause longer than a pause between intonation groups (the latter becomes optional in that case). In the following piece of linguistic text the end of each period is underscored:

Conversation itself, of course, takes the most varied forms: it may be between strangers, or between acquaintances, or between intimates: it may involve exchanging information, or merely exchanging good will or perhaps ill will. There are numerous formal differences to be found between various kinds: but they all have certain basic characteristics in common.

(David Abercrombie).

An important finding here is that each small period presents a syntactical and semantical unity, just as other rhythmic elements do. Thus units of rhythm are actually units of meaning: a foot brings out one stressed word, an intonation group is normally a word combination or a clause, a small period of the kind we singled out in the above example unites two or three pragmatically similar homogeneous parts of the sentence, and, finally, the supraphrasal unity develops one theme.

Prosody with its constant rise and drop of pitch and intensity, with falling tones indicating finality and with pauses of varying length helps us to understand the text. Prosody creates rhythmic groups by uniting them, on the one hand, and by separating them one from the others, on the other. We can call these functions of rhythm structuring, cohesive, delimiting. We can paraphrase this by saying that prosody is used for cohesion of the text and for delimiting its structural elements. To this we can add the aesthetic function of rhythm which appeals to our sense of harmony.

Here is another example of prosodic composition of prose supported by experimental data:

After a very long pause/ he entered upon an account/ of this great circumstance in his life/ with an air which I thought/ raised my idea of him/ above what I had ever had before:// and gave me the picture/ of that cheerful mind of his/ before it received that stroke/ which had ever since/affected his words and actions.

(John Steele)

In this long period (read by a professional actor) there are four small periods (underscored at the end). Within each small period there is a rise of pitch and a drop at the end. In the first period, for example, the intonation groups are pronounced within the following F_o ranges: 1. 220 Hz — 100 Hz 2. 275 Hz - 95 Hz 3. 235 Hz - 85 Hz. The lowest pitch level is reached at the end of the period: 1.150 Hz 2.110 Hz 3. 85 Hz.

The presence of phonation periods uttered without an inner pause was also found in spontaneous talk, mass media interviews, TV news reading and weather forecast. However their lengths may vary considerably.

As we listen to a text read aloud or to someone talking we expect the reader or speaker to make pauses. Pauses are necessary for the speaker to take a breath and to collect one's thoughts. For the listener they give a chance to hear and process the speech signal, in other words, digest what he hears. Phonation and pausation time periods are balanced but they are not equal at all. In reading a fable, for instance, most English readers kept the ratio at 2:1 which means that speech takes twice as much time as pause. That was probably the easiest thing to listen to, which even a child could understand. The following data indicates how information is squeezed into phonation periods of longer duration, and what a challenge it is to humans: public speech - 3.3:1, spontaneous talk - 3.6:1, mass media interview — 4:1, TV news — 13:1, weather forecast —15:1. No matter how difficult it is for us to follow news reading presented that way we can still cope, for some time. We have to get used to accelerating rhythms of our time or be selective and protect ourselves by ignoring part of the informa­tion poured on us.

For the present part of our discussion the relevant conclusion is that time intervals also serve as elements of speech rhythm but not in absolute duration. It is the relative lengths of uninterrupted talk and pause that matters.

There are sociocultural norms which prompt you that in a conversa­tion people ought to take turns, and holding the floor for a long time is not polite unless we deal with people of unequal social statuses. In a conversation between two people a theme is developed by two people at least, and both speakers are supposed to contribute (see Part V for an example of a polilogue). When the theme is dropped off, there may be a long lapse of pause but not obligatorily. People normally find a way of opening a new theme and signal that by increased loudness and higher pitch. Thus even in spontaneous talk when there are common themes for people to discuss there are prosodic signals to separate one part of the talk (Theme 1, for example) from the other (Theme 2). The difference between monologue and dialogue (or polilogue) is that each participant takes a share of time. Time balance between the contributors depends on the social conventions, including the situation, the status, the abilities and the pragmatic aim of each individual.

Now we can sum up the features of rhythm which have been found in conversation (the basic ones are given in bold):

• rhythmic group,

• intonation group,

• phonation period (phrase, utterance),

• theme talk.

Although the rhythm of spontaneous talk is not so obvious, it certainly is more varied and more flexible in many ways, its basic units are similar to that of reading, for example, or verse. It was proved experimentally that the average length of a rhythmic group does not exceed one second, the average length of an intonation group is around 2-3 seconds. There are physical and cognitive conditions of speech production and speech perception which determine the quantification of speech into similar commensurable units. It was also hypothesized that stress time is equal to heart beat, while intonation group (or phonation period) is equal to the time of breath group. We talk as fast as our mind works, as it mon­itors the motor activity of articulators synchronizing it with breathing activity.

Psycholinguistic and phonetic experiments suggest that there is a multi-level time grid with syllable as the minimal unit of motor activity (the average length of a syllable is around 200 ms), then a higher level stress group (foot) unit synchronized with pulse (the average length is in the range of 400-600 ms) and above it is the intonation group (phrase, tone group) synchronized with a breathing period (around 2-3 sec). The length of a theme (supra-phrasal unity) is around 30 sec {Antipoval984, Lehiste 1973, Uldull 1971). и*

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