A musical model of speech rhythm.

Abstract

Research on speech rhythm has been notoriously oblivious to describing actual rhythms in speech. We present here a model of speech rhythm at the sentence level inspired by musical conceptions of meter. We posit that speech is underlain by a basic metricality. However, instead of arguing that speech is isochronous, we propose that utterances can have internal changes of meter, making them “heterometric.” In addition, we see 2 rhythmic devices for obviating the need for meter changes within utterances and thus maintaining the stability of the rhythm. Both of them involve subdivisions of component beats into subbeats: 1) subdivisions into 2’s and 3’s, resulting in duplets and triplets, respectively; and 2) subdivisions according to complex ratios, resulting in polyrhythms. We tested the model acoustically by having a group of 14 participants read unfamiliar sentences aloud and examining the extent to which their timing conformed with the predictions of a priori rhythmic transcriptions of the sentences. The observed patterns of variability in speech timing for these sentences, when measured at the bar level of the transcription, were generally consistent with the musical model.

A Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music

“…The system should show similarities to features of stress timing seen in speech and music, whereby syllabic units often occur in 2- or 3-unit groupings, with a sense of stress on the initial syllable (Brown et al, 2017 ). This conveys what linguists call “headedness” (Jackendoff, 2011 ), which is a hierarchical differentiation of the elements within a grouping, where emphasis is generally placed on the first element.…”

A Musical Approach to Speech Melody

“…Following on the landmark work of Joshua Steele in 1775, we believe that our use of musical notation provides an opportunity for such a unification. We have developed a musical model of speech rhythm elsewhere (Brown et al, 2017). That model focuses on meters and the relative duration values of syllables within a sentence.…”

“…While the purpose of the present study is to quantify speech melody, rather than speech rhythm, the study is in fact a companion to a related one about speech rhythm (Brown et al, 2017). Hence, we took advantage of the insights of that study to present approximate rhythmic transcriptions of the test items in all of the figures.…”

“…Hence, we took advantage of the insights of that study to present approximate rhythmic transcriptions of the test items in all of the figures. However, it is important to keep in mind that, while the melodic transcriptions represent the actual results of the present study, the rhythmic transcriptions are simply approximations generated by the second author and are in no way meant to represent the mean rhythmic trend of the group’s productions as based on timing measurements (as they do in Brown et al, 2017). In other words, the present study was not devoted to integrating our present approach to speech melody with our previous work on speech rhythm, which will be the subject of future analyses.…”

“…In doing so, this analysis would help revive the long-forgotten work of Steele (1775) and his integrative method of representing both speech rhythm and melody using a common system of musical notation. A companion musical model of speech rhythm using musical notation is presented elsewhere (Brown et al, 2017). …”