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CHAPTER V

TIME RELATIONS AS TREATED BY THE EXPERIMENTALISTS

BRÜCKE seems to have been the first to give experimental determinations of the Taktgleichheit of verse. He asserts that "in German iambs and trochees it is not the quantity, not the alternation of long and short syllables, which holds together the rhythm but the repeated rising and falling of the accent at regular intervals" (p. 64). It is the interval between accents that really matters. The emphasis is thus kept on time relations but thrown off from the individual syllables on to the foot as a whole. There is a strong suspicion aroused that Brücke scanned his lines. Triplett and Sanford, using a combined tapping and voice record, but relying on the tapping, found great regularity in the intervals between accents in nursery rhymes. The method has already been criticized. It probably accounts for the results. Hurst and McKay3 got similar results, but in their case large variations were deliberately discarded; they never read naturally but always scanned. These two considerations invalidate the results as far as the present point is concerned.

Bolton says, "In order for vocal utterances to form a rhythmic series, they must occur at regular intervals of time which can not exceed or fall much below certain limits." The different intensities, however, give unity to the series. The above statement has no experimental grounds. Squire (p. 541) says, "Temporalness in its connotation of regular succession is the basal principle of rhythm." However, changes of intensity can also produce a rhythm in a regular time series. The doctrine here seems to be that there must be regularity in time first and that the grouping may be caused by temporal or accentual variations of the regular series.

Wallin (p. 32) says that "the question of the quantitative character of poetry or prose, is closed. All speech is quantitative, and the distinction, popularly and confidently posited between quantitative and non-quantitative verse is grounded upon fallacious assumptions." His experiments give no warrant for such a gratu

"Die physiologischen Grundlagen der neuhochdeutschen Verskunst."

2 American Journal of Psychology, 12, 1901.

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itous attack upon a distinction which is founded upon no assumptions whatever. Of course, no one in his senses ever doubted that speech is quantitative but there has been grave doubt whether quantity in speech gives rise to the rhythm of verse. So far as Wallin's results show anything at all on this point they indicate that quantity is not responsible for the phenomena of rhythm. "The regularity of the intervals in a given set of records of English poetry, the intervals of which are mostly of the two syllable type, and the scansion of which is rhythmically free was about 3 per cent. higher than the corresponding set of records of English prose, the reading of which is rhythmically free (32 per cent. of variation in this case). When the scansion or reading is natural, artistic and rhythmically free the complex centroid intervals are only slightly more regular in poetry than in prose" (pp. 118, 119). But certainly poetry is more rhythmical than prose. No reasons are given why the changes in quantity within a line, so far as they have any meaning at all and are not simply natural differences in time value of the sounds, should not be regarded as concomitants of the accent rather than as themselves determining the rhythm. The centroid system advocated by Wallin or Scripture is likable and sensible, but to try to graft it onto the older time or music theory of verse rhythm is equivalent to abandoning it altogether. Wallin himself seems to recognize this when he says (p. 113), "nor are centroid intervals to be conceived as a succession of bars of invariable length, nor as feet of similar length, nor as successive quanta of time conforming to an invariable measure." The centroid system of Wallin and Scripture is the equivalent of the section plan of the metrists and of the system of monopressures, if I understand the latter."

The centroid is really an accented, or as some would call it, a weighted syllable. Its marks of differentiation are increased loudness, duration and heightened pitch. Wallin assumes that of these duration is the essential one, but he gives no reason for saying so and certainly the more obvious one is the increased loudness. Such a centroid is, in the simplest terms, a part of the sound series marked by one stress maximum. As used by Wallin the analysis of verse into such elements leaves no essential distinction between prose and verse. According to the arrangements printed by Scriptures for certain verses of poetry there is nothing left corresponding to a rhythm pattern for the verse. When tables are printed giving only the average number of syllables per centroid, or the average time 'Cf. Skeat, Philolog. Soc. Trans., 1895-8. Only a few syllables can be pronounced on one breath pressure and this group is made the rhythmic unit. 8" Elements."

value of a centroid group, the only possible data for the analysis into rhythmic constituents are obscured. Surely rhythm consists of something more than the mere succession of these groups at more or less regular intervals of time. Are we to say that all rhythms are the same, both prose and verse-just this simple succession? Such an answer would be far from satisfactory; the centroid theory must develop a more thorough-going explanation of the phenomena which make one rhythm different from another before it can be considered as anything more than a way of summarizing certain observations which do not reach to the details. Inasmuch, however, as the centroid theory gets beyond the notion that there is no rhythm. without extreme regularity of time relations it marks an immense step in advance.

Brücke, Bolton, Squire and McDougall recognize an effect of intensity (or accent in some form) only as a subsidiary factor entering in where there is already a uniform time series. Squire and McDougall1 even conceive of a rhythm without any accentual or at least without an intensive variety whatever.

Meumann considers time and intensity as compensating factors, either of which may take the place of the other. Just what this means for verse rhythm in view of the very regular association of the two in one syllable is hard to understand. There is no experimental evidence that a stressed syllable when short in time is correspondingly more intense. What evidence there is points just the other way.

The apparatus adopted in the present investigation is not designed to measure intensities nor have I been particularly concerned with the question of their measurement. Even if we had a complete plot showing the absolute and relative intensities of all the sounds of any given series of words or for any given verse, the question of the final basis of verse rhythm would be no nearer solved than it is to-day. We now know that intensities are there and we know their serial order. It is the times by which they are separated which we do not know and it is these that we must be able to describe if we are going to give a full account of the conditions under which the particular rhythmic phenomena of verse arise.

The only point with regard to the intensities in verse which it would help us to know about is their sequence in such a phrase as pa ta pa' or pa' ta pa. In such groups there appears to be a certain hierarchy of intensities. Similarly in such a line as papa' papa' papa' papa' such a hierarchy seems to exist, the second accented

'Amer. Jour. of Psychol., 12, 509, 541, 1901.

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syllable being stronger or heavier than the first. But these are questions of the detail differences of particular rhythm figures. To answer this is to tell nothing of the relative importance of duration and stress. Such questions will have to be answered if it turns out in the end that stress differences of this minor sort are the only differences that can be found between rhythms of different types or figures; meanwhile such details may be left aside while the other possible differences of the patterns are being examined.

CHAPTER VI

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

(a) Procedure

THE technique of the experiments has already been indicated in describing the apparatus. The subject was asked to recite the verses naturally and at the same time distinctly. None of the subjects1 found anything in the conditions of the experiment to prevent doing this. In the case of nonsense syllables, which were always

TABLE I

THE IAMBIC TETRAMETER, Papa' papa' papa' papa'. At the left the reader and the number of his readings. Under "Pa," the average time value of the first syllable of each foot. Under "V," the mean variation per cent. Under "pa'," the second syllable. Under "foot," the average time of the foot. Under “ratio,” the average quotient of the accented divided by the unaccented syllable.

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1 The readers in these experiments were: W, Dr. F. L. Wells, then Lecturer in Barnard College; R, A. E. Rejall, graduate student in psychology; L, D. O. Lyon, graduate student in psychology; H, H. L. Hollingworth, then Assistant in Psychology; F, S. Froeberg, sometime Assistant in Psychology; B, the author. 2 The time is given, in all the tables, in hundredths of a second.

In all the tables, the columns headed "V" give the mean variation expressed as a per cent. of the total time.

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