PETER ROACH'S THEORIES REGARDING RHYTHM

  

The stress-timed theory states that the times from each stressed syllable to the next will tend to be the same, irrespective of the number of intervening unstressed syllables. The theory also claims that while some languages (e.g Russian and Arabie) have stress-timed rhythm similar to that of English, others ( such French, Telugu and Yoruba); in these languages all syllables, whether stressed or unstressed, tend to occur  at regular time intervals and the time between syllables will be shorter or longer in proportion to the number of unstressed syllables. Some writers have developed theories of English rhythm in which a unit of rhythm, the foot, is used (with an obvious parallel in the metrical analysis of verse); the foot begins with stressed syllable and includes all following unstressed syllables up to (but not including) the following stressed syllable. The example sentence given in "Definition of Rhythm" would be divided into feet as follows:

Some theories of rhythm go further than this, and point to the fact that some feet are stronger than others, producing strong-weak patterns in larger pieces of speech above the level of the foot. To understand how this could be done, let's start with a simple example: the word "twenty" has one strong and one weak syllable, forming one foot. A diagram of it's rhythmical structure can be made, where S stands for "strong" and W for "weak".

The word "places" has the same form:

Now consider the phrase "twenty places", where "places" will normally carry stronger stress than "twenty", i.e will be rhytmically stronger.

We can make our "tree diagram" grow to look like this:

If we then look at this phrase in the context of a longer phrase "twenty places further back", and build up the "further back" part in a similar way, we would end up with an even more elaborate structure.

By analysing speech in this way we are able  to show the relationships between strong and weak elements, and the different levels of stress that we find. The strength of any particular syllable can be measured by counting up the number of times and S occurs above it; the levels in the sentence shown above can be diagramed like this (leaving out syllables that have never received stress at any level):

SPANISH RHYTHM (Héctor Ortiz Lira)

Spanish rhythm has some characteristics in common with english.As explained before , very much the same types of words- content,as opposed to structural are liable to be accented in spanish.This to easily identifiable rhythmic groups, each one containing an accented syllable with or without the addition of unaccented ones.Furthermore, the number of accents in an utterance can be reduced as tempo is quickened, 

A)

B)

One of the differences between English an Spanish rhythm lies the fact that spanish vowel weakening in terms of quality and quantity is very slight compared with English.A further difference can be seen in Spanish polysyllabic words, wich may take extra stresses apart from those that would normally occur in the citation form, thus producing an affected or emphatic rhythm E.g

C)

RHYTHM IN MUSIC

Rhythm, in music, the placement of sounds in time. In its most general sense rhythm (Greekrhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements. The notion of rhythm also occurs in other arts (e.g., poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture) as well as in nature (e.g., biological rhythms).

Attempts to define rhythm in music have produced much disagreement, partly because rhythm has often been identified with one or more of its constituent, but not wholly separate, elements, such as accent, metre, and tempo. As in the closely related subjects of verse and metre, opinions differ widely, at least among poets and linguists, on the nature and movement of rhythm. Theories requiring “periodicity” as the sine qua non of rhythm are opposed by theories that include in it even nonrecurrent configurations of movement, as in prose or plainchant.

Elements of rhythm

Unlike a painting or a piece of sculpture, which are compositions in space, a musical work is a composition dependent upon time. Rhythm is music’s pattern in time. Whatever other elements a given piece of music may have (e.g., patterns in pitch or timbre), rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music. Rhythm can exist without melody, as in the drumbeats of primitive music, but melody cannot exist without rhythm. In music that has both harmony and melody, the rhythmic structure cannot be separated from them. Plato’s observation that rhythm is “an order of movement” provides a convenient analytical starting point.

RHYTHM AND PHONECTICS (VIDEO)

RHYTHM IN POETRY

Rhythm refers to the pattern of sounds made by varying the stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem.

When you speak, you stress some syllables and leave others unstressed. When you string a lot of words together, you start seeing patterns. Rhythm is a natural thing. It's in everything you say and write, even if you don't intend for it to be.

Rhythm, in poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a certain range of regularity, of specific language features, usually features of sound. Although difficult to define, rhythm is readily discriminated by the ear and the mind, having as it does a physiological basis. It is universally agreed to involve qualities of movement, repetition, and pattern and to arise from the poem’s nature as a temporal structure. Rhythm, by any definition, is essential to poetry; prose may be said to exhibit rhythm but in a much less highly organized sense. The presence of rhythmic patterns heightens emotional response and often affords the reader a sense of balance.

Metre, although often equated with rhythm, is perhaps more accurately described as one method of organizing a poem’s rhythm. Unlike rhythm, metre is not a requisite of poetry; it is, rather, an abstract organization of elements of stress, duration, or number of syllables per line into a specific formal pattern. The interaction of a given metrical pattern with any other aspect of sound in a poem produces a tension, or counterpoint, that creates the rhythm of metrically based poetry.

Compared with the wide variety of metrical schemes, the types of metrically related rhythms are few. Duple rhythm occurs in lines composed in two-syllable feet, as in Shakespeare’s line

In metrical schemes based on three-syllable feet, the rhythm is triple:

http://www.wier.ca/attachments/178_Rhythm.pdf

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/looking-at-rhythm-and-meter-in-poetry.seriesId-332011.html

DEFINITION OF A LITTLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PHONETICS

 

                                                                  

   Rhythm

 

Speech is perceived as a sequence of events in time, and the word rhythm is used torefer to the way events are distributed in time. Obvious examples of vocal rhythms arechanting as part of games (for example, children calling words while skipping, or football crowds calling their team’s name) or in connection with work (e.g. sailors’chants used to synchronise the pulling on an anchor rope). In conversational speechthe rhythms are vastly more complicated, but it is clear that the timing of speech is notrandom. An extreme view (though a quite common one) is that English speech has arhythm that allows us to divide it up into more or less equal intervals of time calledfeet, each of which begins with a stressed syllable: this is called thestress-timed  rhythm hypothesis. Languages where the length of each syllable remains more or lessthe same as that of its neighbours whether or not it is stressed are calledsyllable-timed. Most evidence from the study of real speech suggests that such rhythms onlyexist in very careful, controlled speaking, but it appears from psychological researchthat listeners’ brains tend to hear timing regularities even where there is little or no physical regularity.

RHYTHM AND SYLLABLES

Pitch, loudness, and tempo combine to make up a language's expression of rhythm. Languages vary greatly in the way in which they make rhythmical contrasts. English uses stressed syllables produced at roughly regular intervals of time (in fluent speech) and separated by unstressed syllables-- a stress-timed rhythm which we can tap out in a 'tum-te-tum' way, as in a traditional line of poetry: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.

In French, the syllables are produced in a steady flow, resulting in a 'machine-gun' effect--a syllable-timed rhythm which is more like a 'rat-a-tat-a-tat. 


'In Latin, it was the length of a syllable (whether long or short) which provided the basis of rhythm.

In many oriental languages, it is pitch height (high vs. low)."