7.2. Rhythm of verse and prose

Within the study of spoken language phonetics needs to be able to describe the phonetic substance of any communicative aspect of speech. We will now need to describe the stylistic aspect of communication in which segmental and suprasegmental phonetic features of speech all play a role.

The key concept is rhythm understood as regularity, or periodicity, of similar events. Our task is to see how speech rhythm is created, and why it is important for style differentiation as well as the prosodic arrangement of the text. It is interesting to find properties of speech rhythm common with our biological rhythms, such as heartbeat and breathing. It may give us awareness of things of art in music, painting and architecture appealing to our sense of harmony and be, therefore, more aesthetically satisfactory. And, last but not least, it is good to know how elements of speech rhythm affect human perception of speech and may be successfully employed by anyone in possession of the skills.

7.2.1. Verse

Rhythm was first described in poetics. The laws of versification includ­ed such means of rhythmic arrangement as meter (iamb or chorea, for example), rhyme, including inner rhyme (within a line), caesurae, lines, stanzas, lexical repetition, syntactical parallelism, assonance (repetition of similar vowels), alliteration (repetition of similar consonants). In a classical poem one could find as many as 15 rhythm-creating features, while in free verse their number dropped to three. To illustrate just a few features: a) feet, assonance, rhyme, lexical repetitions, lines which rhyme in a stanza to the pattern of ABAB, the number of feet in lines is mirrored in ABBA pattern:

'Sweet, 'sweet is the 'greeting of eyes, And sweet is the voice in its greeting, When a'dieux have grown old and good-'byes 'Fade away where old 'time is retreating.

(John Keats)

b) alliteration, meter, rhyme, inner rhyme, lines with equal number of syllables,^-syntactic parallelisms, stanza:

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, ’'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is and nothing more.

(Edgar Allan Рое)

c) free verse with feet and lines left as the two features common with verse structure and tone groups of similar length to evoke the sensation of rhythmical prose, or even a conversation:

This sea will never die, neither will it ever grow old

nor cease to be blue, nor in the dawn

cease to lift up its hills

and let the slim black ship of Dionysos come sailing in

with grape-vines up the mast, and dolphins leaping.

What do I care if the smoking ships

of the P. & O. and the Orient Line and all other stinkers

cross like clock-work the Minoan distance!

They only cross, the distance never changes.

(D.H. Lawrence)

What are the minimal characteristics of verse which still provide its rhythmic identity in free verse? The basic rhythmic units of verse are:

foot - a stressed syllable with the unstressed syllables (called clitics) that either precede it (proclitics) or follow it (enclitics),

line — a graphic representation of one or two intonation groups, normally with an equal number of feet in them,

stanza - part of the poem with a fixed number of lines, in a classical verse with a patterned order of rhymes between the lines.

When a piece of verse is read aloud, there are other prosodic features which accompany the basic rhythmic units and enhance the rhythmic effect. They are combinations of prosodic features which mark the beginning and end of feet, lines and stanzas as well as their recurring melodic and dynamic patterns and voice quality features. The beginning of each unit is brought out by maximal pitch and intensity values, while the end is accompanied by a relative drop of pitch and intensity, which is especially noticeable at the end of a line. Besides, a line normally finishes with slowing down of tempo and a pause; in case it coincides with the end of stanza, the pause is longer. The pitch patterns are noted for declination and levelled out falling tones, loudness is diminished, voice quality is husky.

There are three major generalizations we can make about rhythmic units:

1. rhythmic units constitute a hierarchy: each bigger unit consists of a number of smaller units (foot, line, stanza);

2. in reading aloud all the prosodic features (pitch, intensity, tempo, pause and voice quality) take part: they indicate the boundaries and pattern the basic units of rhythm;

3. a few prosodic features of reading verse are style-specific, for example, levelled out tones, diminished loudness, husky voice quality.