To Steven Willet

Plinio Almeida Barbosa (plinio@iel.unicamp.br)
Wed, 29 Nov 95 09:04:14 EDT

---On 95-11-28 Steven Willett wrote: --->
>
>In the aesthetics of poetry, rhythm has a powerful effect, but I'm
>not sure precisely what. The rhythms of music, dance and poetry
>require both repetition and periodicity. The thing repeated can be
>very intricate and its period quite long, as in classical Indian ragas
>(think of those prolonged arching phrases for the tabla), or simple
>and short, as in rock, but we hear them all as a single generic kind
>of rhuthmos however different in kind. Perhaps linguists or cognitive
>scientists can help here. Is there a psychological theory of rhythm?
>

Paul Fraisse's work can help you concerning rhythm perception: "La Psycho-
logie du rythme", Presses Universitaires de France, 1974.
You can see also Nord,L. Kruckenberg,A. and Fant,G. (1990) "Some timing
studies of prose, poetry and music", Speech Communication 9,477-483.

When you write (second line above): "The rhytms (...) both repetition and
periodicity", I prefer to write "repetition and structure". Rhythm emerges
from a regularity that is perceived as a structure (subjective rhythmisation),
as pointed out by Fraisse(1974) or Woodrow(1951). When the stimuli are
structured (as in speech) one can refer to objective rhythmisation.

Other works are:

Wenk & Wioland (1982) Is French really syllable-timed? Journal of Phonetics
10, 193-216.

Lehiste survey about isocrony is a very good source of information:

Ilse Lehiste (1977) Isocrony reconsidered. Journal of Phonetics 5, 253-263.

There is also my own work:

Plinio A. Barbosa. Caracterisation et generation automatique de la structu-
ration rythmique du francais. These de doctorat. INP de Grenoble, France.
(copies are available at the Institut de la Communication Parlee, Grenoble,
France, with Gerard Bailly, e-mail: bailly@icp.grenet.fr).

There is also the Proceedings of the 4th Rhythm Workshop on Rhythm Perception
and Production (Claire Gerard is one of the editors: Univ. Rene Descartes,
Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale).

But all this is only a few examples of a lot of work on rhythm perception and
production.

Plinio.

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"En apprenant la prosodie d'une langue on rentre plus intimement
dans l'esprit de la nation qui la parle que par quelque genre d'etude
que ce soit." Mme de Stael (De l'Allemagne).

Plinio Almeida Barbosa, Prof. Dr.
(Doctorat de l'INPG-Specialite signal-image-parole, `a l'Institut de la
Communication Parlee, Grenoble, France)

Research subjects: rhythm, duration, prosody, speech synthesis, cognition
(Grants from Fundacao de Amparo `a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo-Fapesp
are strongly acknowledged)

Address (adresse/endereco):
Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL) - Unicamp
Laboratorio de Fonetica Acustica e Psicolinguistica Experimental (LAFAPE)
CP 6045 - 13970-081 - Campinas - SP - Brasil
FAX: 55-192-391501 Telephone: 55-192-397784 (message avec Ilda)

e-mail: plinio@iel.unicamp.br

Home phone number (telephone perso): 55-192-338316
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