Researches on the rhythm of speech.
125
The most regular coordination of the intervals in poetry is never per¬
fect. The lowest observed percentage of irregularity in seventeen rec¬
ords was 3 fc-
The highest regularity occurred in the type of routine scansion
accompanied by beating time. This type represents the acme of regu¬
larity in the accentual or centroid rhythm of speech.
The coordination in sing-song (irregularity, 8%) and doggerel scan¬
sion (irregularity, 6%) may be approximately the same. Both are fully
twice as irregular as mechanically regulated (routine) scansion.
The most regular coordination in reading scansion (io% of irregu¬
larity, A. D. B.æ) is slightly inferior to the coordination in sing-song
scansion. The regularity in reading scansion is the most inexact of all
the types of scansion of poetry. It is most exact, other things equal,
when the intervals are composed quite uniformly of the same number of
syllables (contrast Tennyson’s verses with Browning’s and Byron’s). The
regularity in the reading of the selections as prose and poetry was the
same. When the punctuation marks were eliminated, it was only slightly
increased.
The range in the irregularity of the intervals in various kinds of speech
may be about o.iT (from o.oi) routine scansion, to 0.12s, A. D.
B.^, poetry, and W. L. P., prose), or 26<jc (from 3°f0, routine scansion,
to 29%, Japanese poetry). The range for the different sets was 16%
(from 7%, Tables LXXIV. and LXXV., to 23<J0, Tables LXXVII. and
LXXIX. ), or about ÿs of the former (the individual records) ; and
for the repeated readings by the same person, 2 <j0 (from 2 °]0, C. O., to
4 fo, J- M. T. and S.).
According to the \of0 standard, 23% of the records of poetry are
rhythmical, exclusive of records of poetry read as prose, both with and
without punctuation marks. With a standard of 15%, 46% of the rec¬
ords of poetry, and 20% of the records of prose (record of melodious
prose), are rhythmical. Even in the latter case, more than one-half of
a fairly comprehensive collection of speech records was non-rhythmical.
Comparison of complex- and simple-centroid intervals.
The range for the former was approximately 1.80 times that for the
latter.
The general character of the extreme deviations was the same for both.
For the complex, however, they were uniformly, for the simple chiefly
excess extremes.
The average for the complex was 0.14s, or 1.31 times, longer than for
the simple intervals.
