Rhythmic characteristics of prose and verse in varieties of Portuguese

Abstract

Whether varieties of Portuguese differ in their rhythmic classification is not entirely clear. European Portuguese is generally considered to employ stress-based rhythm whereas the rhythmic classification of Brazilian Portuguese is disputed. Acoustically-based measures of rhythm have usually employed spoken prose passages for language samples. Possibly, the apparent rhythmic characteristics of language varieties may be clarified by employing different types of language materials. We selected spoken prose and traditional verse for investigation. Five native speakers of European Portuguese and five native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese recorded a sonnet consisting of 154 syllables and a short prose passage consisting of 270 syllables. From these recordings, acoustically based rhythm metrics, as suggested by Ramus, et al. [Cognition 73, 1999, 265-292] and Ling, et al. [Language and Speech 43, 2000, 377-401] were calculated. Measures of consonantal duration variability increased from spoken prose to spoken verse, suggesting that the talkers employed slower, more clearly articulated speech in reading the poem than in reading the prose passage. However, the two tasks did not clearly distinguish between the two varieties of Portuguese.

Task effect on L2 rhythm production by Cantonese learners of Portuguese

“…For the PVIs, values of nPVI_V (39 for prose reading and 51 for poem reading) reported in Bond et al (2008) were higher than that of all our three tasks in the current study (9.02, 20.6 and 17.6), while Bond et al's (2008) rPVI_C score for poem reading ( 24) is between reading (19.21), and spontaneous speech (retelling 30.21; interpreting 30.61). However, as previously reported, the results in Bond et al differ from other studies substantially.…”

“…They used ΔC, ΔV, %V, rPVI_C, and nPVI_V to compare the rhythm of reading of proses and poems. However, values in Bond et al (2008) were approximately several hundred times lower than the other studies (e.g., ΔC: 0.16 for prose reading in Bond et al, 2008 vs 55.40 for reading in Frota & Vigário, 2001). This could be because the unit used in this study was seconds, while other studies, including ours, used milliseconds.…”

“…This could be because the unit used in this study was seconds, while other studies, including ours, used milliseconds. Although Bond et al (2008) offers an interesting comparison between reading prose and poems, due to the lack of sufficient details reported, we could not make any useful comparisons between our study and theirs. We made further comparisons in Table 3, detailing the mean scores and standard errors of the seven metrics used in this study.…”

“…Recall that we use previously published research as our L1 baseline, i.e., L1 Portuguese speech in Frota and Vigário (2001), L1 Cantonese speech in Mok & Dellwo (2008) and Mok (2009). Apart from these studies, Bond et al (2008) also studied speech rhythm in L1 Portuguese production. They used ΔC, ΔV, %V, rPVI_C, and nPVI_V to compare the rhythm of reading of proses and poems.…”