Mild the Mists Upon the Hill

Lucy

RHYTHM

Now we shall focus our attention on English rhythm. We cannot fully describe English intonation without reference to speech rhythm. Prosodic components (pitch, loudness, tempo) and speech rhythm work interdependently. Rhythm seems to be a kind of framework of speech organization. Linguists sometimes consider rhythm as one of the components of intonation. D.Crystal, for instance, views rhythmicality as one of the constituents of prosodic systems (50).

We would like to start by declaring rhythm to be a very general term. It is understood as periodicity in time and space. We find it everywhere in life. The work of all kinds of machinery is said to be rhythmical. In nature rhythm is observed in the successions of seasons, days and nights, the changes of the moon phases, high and low tide. The most evident illustration of rhythm in the physiology of living beings, is the heart beating and breathing. Most of human activities appear to be rhythmical — swimming, running, skiing, knitting and other muscular movements. We very well feel and appreciate the artistic rhythm in music, dance and other fields of art.

Rhythm as a linguistic notion is realized in lexical, syntactical and prosodic means and mostly in their combinations. For instance, such figures of speech as sound or word repetition, syntactical parallelism, intensification and others are perceived as rhythmical on the lexical, syntactical and prosodic levels, e.g.

"But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year" (O. Wilde).

Here the syntactical parallelism of the homogeneous clauses is correlated with the identical prosodic contour of the intonation groups in the phrase and is strengthened by the repetition of the conjunction "and", a stylistic device known as polysyndeton.

In this section we shall actually deal with the prosodic aspect of rhythm. Speech production is naturally closely connected with the process of breathing. So speech activity as well as any other human activity is conditioned by physiological factors among others and is characterized by rhythm. From the materialistic point of view rhythm is one of the means of matter organization. The rhythmical arrangement of different phenomena of objective reality is presented in the form of periodicity, or tendency towards proportion and symmetry.

In speech, the type of rhythm depends on the language. Linguists divide languages into two groups: syllable-timed like French, Spanish and other Romance languages and stress-timed languages, such as Germanic languages English and German, as well as Russian. In a syllable-timed language the speaker gives an approximately equal amount of time to each syllable, whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed and this produces the effect of even rather staccato rhythm.

In a stress-timed language, of which English is a good example, the rhythm is based on a larger unit than syllable. Though the amount of time given on each syllable varies considerably, the total time of uttering each rhythmic unit is practically unchanged. The stressed syllables of a rhythmic unit form peaks of prominence. They tend to be pronounced at regular intervals no matter how many unstressed syllables are located between every two stressed ones. Thus the distribution of time within the rhythmic unit is unequal. The regularity is provided by the strong "beats".

We should like to mention here that speech rhythm has the immediate influence on vowel reduction and elision. Form words such as prepositions,' conjunctions as well as auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns are usually unstressed and pronounced in their weak forms with reduced or even elided vowels to secure equal intervals between the stressed syllables, e.g.

Come and 'see me to_xmorrow. None of them~was 'any ^good.

The markedly regular stress-timed pulses of speech seem to create the strict, abrupt and spiky effect of English rhythm. Russian rhythm is perceived as more flexible, liquid and smooth. As you probably remember the English language is an analytical one. This factor explains the presence of a considerable number of monosyllabic form words which are normally unstressed in a stretch of English speech. To bring the,meaning of the utterance to the Listener the stressed syllables of the notional words are given more prominence by the speaker and the unstressed monosyllabic form words are left very weak. It is often reflected in the spelling norm in the conversational style, e.g.

I'm sure you mustn't refuse him.

In teaching practice it is essential not only to stress the no; tional words properly but also to leave conjunctions, prepositions, auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns reduced or elided.

Speech rhythm is traditionally defined as recurrence of stressed syllables at more or less equal intervals of time in a speech continuum. We also find a more detailed definition of speech rhythm as the regular alternation of acceleration and slowing down, of relaxation and intensification, of length and brevity, of similar and dissimilar elements within a speech event.

It has long been believed that the basic rhythmic unit is a rhythmic group, a speech segment which contains a stressed syllable with preceding or/and following unstressed syllables attached to it. The stressed syllable is the prosodic nucleus of the rhythmic group. The initial unstressed syllables preceding the nucleus are called proclitics, those following the nucleus are called enclitics. In qualifying the unstressed syllables located between the stressed ones there are two main alternative views among the phoneticians. According to the so-called semantic viewpoint the unstressed syllables tend to be drawn towards the stressed syllable of the same word or to the lexical unit according to their semantic connection, concord with other words, e.g.

Negro Harlem | became | the largest | colony | of coloured people.

According to the other viewpoint the unstressed syllables in between the stressed ones tend to join the preceding stressed syllable. It is the so-called enclitic tendency. Then the above-mentioned phrase will be divided into rhythmical groups as follows, e.g.

Negro Harlem | became the | largest | colony of | coloured people.

It seems that the enclitic tendency is more typical of the English language, though in the speech flow it is sometimes difficult to define the borders of rhythmic groups. So the division into rhythmic groups is no easy matter. The rhythm-unit break is of- ten indeterminate. It may well be said that the speech tempo and style often regulate the division into rhythmic groups. The enclitic tendency is more typical for informal speech whereas the semantic tendency prevails in accurate, more explicit speech.

The more organized the speech is the more rhythmical it appears, poetry being the most extreme example of this. Prose read aloud or delivered in the form of a lecture is more rhythmic than colloquial speech. On the other hand rhythm is also individual — a fluent speaker may sound more rhythmical than a person searching for the right word and refining the structure of his phrase while actually pronouncing it

However, it is fair to mention here that regularity in a speech chain is not realized in its exact isochronous form. Absolutely regular speech produces the effect of monotony. It means that the intervals between the stressed syllables are not physically equal. Some "strokes" may often be missing or mistimed. I.Lehiste claims that isochrony is largely a perceptual phenomenon (67). Whenever short rhythmic groups are mixed with longer ones the speaker minimizes the differences by means of changes in his rate of delivery. Any number of unstressed syllables occurring between the stressed ones are actually compressed to allow the next stressed syllable to come on the regular beat. Now the listener tends to equalize the groups he perceives. In other words the length of the intervals is perceived by the listener as equal despite the changing number of unstressed syllables between the peaks of the rhythmic groups, e.g.

Speech is nothing more | than a series of rough hints | which the hearer must interpret j in order to arrive at the meaning which the speaker wishes to convey (H. Palmer).

Learners of English should be recommended to beat the rhythm while reading sentences of this kind.

The most frequent type of a rhythmic group includes 2-4 syllables, one of them stressed, others unstressed. In phonetic literature we find a great variety of terms defining the basic rhythmic unit, such as an accentual group or a stress group which is a speech segment including a stressed syllable with or without unstressed syllables attached to it; a pause group — a group of words between two pauses, or breath group — which can be uttered within a single breath. As you have probably noticed, the criteria for the definition of these units are limited by physiological factors. The term "rhythmic group" used by most of the linguists (see 67, 57, 2) implies more than a stressed group or breath group. I.V.Zlatoustova (18) terms it "rhythmic structure". Most rhythmic groups are simultaneously sense units. A rhythmic group may comprise a whole phrase, like " I can't do it" or just one word: "Unfortunately..." or even a one-syllable word: "Well..."; "Now...". So a syllable is sometimes taken for a minimal rhythmic unit when it comes into play. Indeed the rhythmic tendency of accentuation in polysyllabic words helps to secure periodicity of dynamic peaks in an utterance. K.Pike finds the term "waves" for rhythm periodicity to be very expressive (72).

Now we must admit that the traditional understanding of rhythm as a regularity of recurrence of stressed syllables was sufficient enough until the main object of linguistic investigations was a written sentence or a phrase in oral discourse. The investigation of the spoken text as a linguistic unit has contributed a lot to the treatment of rhythm since the text as a whole grew the object of analysts' attention. In the present-day linguistics rhythm is analysed as a system of similar adequate elements. A.M.Antipova (2) defines rhythm as a complex language system which is formed by the interrelation of lexical, syntactic and pro-sodic meaas. Prosody creates similarity and isochrony of speech elements. In view of what has just been said it would be perfectly natural to admit that the sphere of rhythm functioning is actually very wide. Rhythmicality marks every text segment: rhythmic groups, intonation groups, phrases and phonopassages. The recurrence of similar and commensurate text segments makes them rhythmic units. The rhythmic effect of the text units is obtained by the prosodic parameters, the pitch of the voice, loud-ness, duration. In fact not only the actual pitch of the voice but its level and range, pausation and other phenomena of a stretch of speech form rhythm constituents. The detailed prosodic analysis of the oral text which is termed by O.S.Akhmanova "fra-sirovka" reveals its rhythmicality. Combinations of the markers are more frequent and effective. In her fundamental work based on the instrumental analysis of English speech A.M.Antipova comes to the conclusion that the rhythmic structure of speech continuum is a hierarchy of rhythmical units of different levels. Each text unit is capable of fulfilling the rhythmic function. It is worth mentioning that the notion of prosodic similarity is very flexible. The rhythm constituents vary not only in different rhythm units but also in different speech realizations, different linguistic activities.

We undoubtedly observe the most striking rhythmicality in poetry. You may have found from reading poetry in your own language that you can often enjoy a poem without fully understanding its meaning. It is possible to pay more attention to the way a poet says something rather than to what he actually has to say. Enjoyment, however, must not be confused with appreciation. It is one thing to gain pleasure from a poem and quite another to be able to say why you liked it. It is hard to define exactly why it gives us pleasure. However, the subject matter of a poem is not necessarily the most important thing about it. Any poem sets out to convey a great deal more than an idea and it is this that distinguishes it from prose. The most common types of poetry are: descriptive, reflective, narrative, the lyric and the sonnet. The ability to distinguish between them helps to understand more readily what a poet's intentions are. To demonstrate the types of verse we have chosen the blocks of poetry which illustrate the stylistic devices discussed further on.

Descriptive are poems which describe people or experiences, scenes or objects.

She dwelt' among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

— Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky. (W. Wordsworth)

Reflective are thoughtful poems often containing a great deal of description which the poet comments on or from which he draws conclusions. Sometimes these conclusions are directly stated, at other times implied.

Mild the mists upon the hill,

Telling not of storms tomorrow;

No; the day has wept its fill,

Spent its store in silent sorrow.

Oh, I'm gone back to the days of youth, I am a child once more, And 'neath my father's sheltering roof, And near the old hall door. (E. Bronte]

Narrative are poems which tell a story. They tend to be longer than other types of poetry but it is comparatively easy to recognize the poet's intention.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-31