Speech rhythm in diachrony and synchrony

ANNOTATION

Key-words: rhythm, stress, syllable, rhythmic structure, syntagm, utterance, prosody, speech production, speech perception

Speech rhythm is an important manifestation of the specific peculiarities of the perceptual and acoustic (prosodic and timbral, in particular) speech structuring in various forms of verbal production and perception. Spoken language rhythm is not understood as a rigidly fixed sequence of evenly repeated particular speech segments and the auditory perception of this sequence, which is characteristic for the rhythm of metric speech, but as the specific distribution of these segments (e.g., of sounds, syllables, rhythmic groups and so on) in time as well as their phonetic (qualitative and quantitative) expression. Such an approach to speech rhythm or the orally realised prose texts makes the problem particularly complex and requires thorough examination.

In the description of the rhythmic patterns of speech texts the basic unit was defined as a rhythmic structure, or RS, understood as one or several syllables of words (both significative and auxiliary) united by a single primary word stress. In speech communication, RS are both units of speech production and speech perception. The syntagm, understood as a phonetic and syntactic unity and expressing single notion in the process of speech-thinking, is taken as a higher linguistic unit on which the speech material's analysis is based.

From the point of view of an integral perception of rhythm in synchrony in Czech, it can be represented as a dot-and-dash line where dots correspond to equally stressed vowels (syllables) and dashes to specifically emphasized sounds (syllables) that are a result of phonological length, wide vowels, syllable-forming sonorants and RS final position. The corresponding picture of Bulgarian speech rhythm will be a dotted line where dots represent vowels (syllables) with a minimum quantitative expression. Russian speech which is characterized by a longer duration of vowels (syllables) can be represented as a dash line or a solid wave-like curve.

The results of our research have supported the validity of the hypothesis on the existence of hierarchy of factors that determine the rhythmic organization of utterances: the underlying factor is found in stress, followed by grammar which affects the speech rhythm indirectly, through various combinations of parts of speech, forming proclitics and enclitics, and finally by stylistic peculiarities though the latter exert but a weak influence on rhythm.

The research of speech rhythm in diachrony and synchrony consists of the analysis and the description of speech rhythmic units concerning Old Church Slavonic, Old Russian, Old High German in diachrony and Modern Russian, German, Czech and Bulgarian in synchrony. The analysis of different texts carried out is caused by urgent necessity in revealing the essence of rhythm and means of its explication; by necessity in subsequent development of comparative (in diachrony and synchrony) researches of the languages' rhythmic organization with different types of stress, different grammar and so on.

The comparison of the rhythmic organization in Russian and German on the basis of written texts from IX till XVII centuries analysed in diachrony gave the opportunity to obtain the following trends: - the regrouping of RS caused by individual historical changes in phonology and morphology and also by the processes connected with the shift of German and Russian language systems from the only synthetic forms to more analytic forms are observed in both languages: - the most predominant RS in language evolution is typical for either of both languages: two-syllable structure with a stress on the first syllable - for German: coexistence of two- and three-syllable structures with a stress both on the first and on the second syllables, greater variability of structures with a tendency of a stress on the middle syllable of RS - for Russian. The most typical for the German RS because of fixed German stress on the root morpheme is the existence of the secondary stress as will as the primary stress forming accurate hierarchy of stresses within polysyllabic structures that is not observed in Russian.

Dynamics (diachrony) and relative statics (synchrony) of the rhythmic organization are characterized by the universal unit: two- and three-syllable structures (classes) with certain variability of types within these two classes. The influence of two forces on the linguistic rhythm is observed: centripetal and centrifugal. The existence of the first force manifests in preserving for both languages the limited number of basic RS. The existence of the second one manifests in "breaking out" from the limits of these RS to create multiformity in the rhythmic text's explication by combination of basic units and functioning of small in numbers structures.

The attempt in this research is undertaken for the first time in revealing typological specificity of the rhythmic organization in diachrony and synchrony with taking into account of accentual-rhythmic dynamics, morphological and stylistic peculiarities of language material. The comparative experimental-phonetic research of subjective and objective characteristics of the rhythmic organization in synchrony was carried out with the help of modern computer techniques. This research intensifies and develops the theory of speech rhythm using comparative approach, extends knowledge and conception of the rhythmic organization characterized by the three main directions of search - for universals, for types and for individual specificity in development of Slavic and Germanic languages.