Prosodic Phrasing and Syllable Prominence in Spoken Prose. A Validated Coding Manual

Current systems for predicting prosodic prominence and boundaries in texts focus on syntax/semantic-based automatic decoding of sentences that need to be annotated syntactically (Atterer & Klein 2002; Windmann et al. 2011). However, to date, there is no phonetically validated replicable system for manually coding prosodic boundaries and syllable prominence in longer sentences or texts. Based on work in the fields of metrical phonology (Liberman & Prince 1977), phrase formation (Hayes 1989) and existing pause coding systems (Gee and Grosjean 1983), we developed a manual for coding prosodic boundaries (with 6 degrees of juncture) and syllable prominence (8 degrees). Three independent annotators applied the coding system to the beginning pages of four German novels and to four short stories (20 058 syllables, Fleiss kappa .82). For the phonetic validation, eight professional speakers read the excerpts of the novels aloud. We annotated the speech signal automatically with MAUS (Schiel 1999). Using PRAAT (Boersma & Weenink 2019), we extracted pitch, duration, and intensity for each syllable, as well as several phonetic parameters for pauses, and compared all measures obtained to the theoretically predicted levels of syllable prominence and prosodic boundary strength. The validation with the speech signal shows that our annotation system reliably predicts syllable prominence and prosodic boundaries. Since our annotation works with plain text, there are many potential applications of the coding system, covering research on prose rhythm, synthetic speech and (psycho)linguistic research on prosody.

Quintilian on Effective Language

Books 8 and 9 of the Institutio take up the third major division of rhetoric, elocutio or effective rhetorical style. Here Quintilian offers an encyclopaedic review of choices and devices at the word, sentence, and passage level, providing examples of their functions and potential abuses. Book 8 covers three of the four virtues of style: correctness, clarity, and ornatus or force. Quintilian favours everyday usage in word choice and warns against the faults of monotony, excess, and offensiveness. He praises visualizing language (enargeia), demurs on sententiae or pithy expressions, and reviews amplifying tactics, such as placing an item in, at the top, or even beyond a rising series, leading to speechlessness. The final section reviews twelve tropes, with special attention to how metaphors are invented. Book 9 opens with a definition of figures of speech as departures from normal usage, and discusses how the form of an expression contributes to its function. It then covers the ‘figures of thought’ such as prosopopoeia and irony, and the syntactic figures or schemes including figures of repetition. The last part treats compositio, involving word order, sound, and rhythm. Using the metrical vocabulary of poetry, Quintilian analyses prosody in terms of the proportion of long to short syllables, creating the pace of a passage, and then discusses prose rhythm in terms of the comma, colon, and period. Overall, Quintilian’s rich and complex treatment of rhetorical style should fuel continuing investigations.

Metrics and Prose Rhythm

The chapter deals with Byzantine metrics and prose rhythm. Byzantine poets used various meters; from the seventh century onward, primarily the Byzantine dodecasyllable, i.e., a meter with a stable number of (12) syllables, which is based on the iambic trimeter of Antiquity and Late Antiquity and is read after the word accent. Various authors (such as Ioannes Geometres, Theodoros Prodromos, and Theodoros Metochites) also wrote hexameters (not only for special occasions), but this meter was less frequently used because for the Byzantine audience the distinction between short and long syllables was lost. The fifteen-syllable verse (or political verse) represents an independent Byzantine development, which, as a combination of hemistichs of eight and seven syllables, may have its origin in early hymnography. Rhythm is part of verse and prose. The prose rhythm, an elementary element of rhetoric, describes the tendency in Greek prose to end clauses in a rhythmically patterned way. The position most suitable for rhythmical regulation of a prose text is at the end of a clause or a period, as also pointed out by Byzantine theoreticians. The so-called Meyer’s law (after Wilhelm Meyer from Speyer) describes the system of placing at least two unstressed syllables between the last two accents of a clause. The character of Byzantine cadences has been very much under debate, and recently, editors have begun to take into account the punctuation practice in manuscripts in order to get a better view of the relationship between punctuation and rhythm.

Formen und Funktionen des ciceronianischen Prosarhythmus

The book deals primarily with the prose rhythm in Cicero’s orations by performing a colometric analysis and draws on prose rhythm for continuous text interpretation. The core thesis is that Latin word accent already has a constitutive function in respect to prose rhythm of classical Latin. Even in the case of Cicero, a set of five so-called “clausulas” is proven to be essentially sufficient for a rhythmic analysis (in the context of the Trias of compositio, concinnitas and numerus). This is illustrated primarily by an interpretation of the first 300 cola of Pro Quinctio, de lege agraria (second speech) and the 14th Philippic.

Physical Excess as a Marker of Genre in the Elder Seneca

This chapter stems from the observation that physical eloquence is often relegated to lesser importance than its linguistic counterpart in Senecan declamation, especially when compared to the wealth of information we have on Cicero’s use of gesture. However, actio remains a pivotal element of Roman declamation. To draw attention to this element, this chapter outlines several types of bodily movement and vocal modulation which Seneca attributes to his declaimers in the Controversiae and Suasoriae. In so doing, it not only describes the practice and function of these actions but also explores how they build into the characteristics of Senecan declamation, which range from the use of personae and sententiae to prose rhythm and the figure of the ideal orator. The analysis ultimately explains why declaimers’ gestures, which are often dismissed as ‘excessive’ by modern readers, acted as effective tools for communication within their original context.

Burma’s Bagnoles

This chapter on Léo Malet draws a connection between automobility and genre mobility. Through the lens of the automobile revolution in postwar France, Goulet discusses four novels in Malet’s Les Noveaux mysterès de Paris cycle (1954-59), demonstrating how cars and transportation infrastructure inform the unfolding of the plot while also defining a prose rhythm of alternating stasis and mobility. More broadly, the motif of the car in Malet’s novels facilitates an ambivalent experience of Paris as torn between nostalgia for the past and commitment to urban modernity.

AUTOMATED ANALYSIS OF RHYTHMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF RUSSIAN- LITERARY PROSAIC TEXT AS A METHOD FOR DETERMINING THE TEXT AFFILIATION TO A LITERARY PERIOD

The article analyses the rhythmic characteristics of Russian-language literary texts using the automated PRD (Prose Rhythm Detector) application. The authors consider the main approaches to the periodization of Russian literature of the XIX-XXI centuries in order to determine the affiliation of works to a particular epoch based on the specifics of the text rhythmic structures. The quantitative and statistical methods of the analysis are used.