The Perception of Rhythm.

The linguist Anne Cutler recently died, and presumably for that reason her paper “The perception of rhythm in language” (Cognition 50 [1994]: 79-81) has been making the rounds; in fact, mollymooly linked to it here a couple of days ago. But all the links I’ve seen go to this site, where it appears (at least in my browser) in a format too huge to read more than a few words of at once — the link I provided above with the title should be more readable. At any rate, do read it; it’s only three pages, and it makes interesting points. It also has a feature which you will want to discover for yourself, so do yourself a favor and read the article before the comments to this thread, where the feature will doubtless be mentioned.

Comments

  1. That’s very good!

    As I was reading the paper, I certainly noticed that the prose was odd, indeed awkward in places, and I wondered whether this was simply the author’s style. I didn’t twig the specific cause until it was explained at the end.

    In my many years of writing and editing, I was always aware of prosodic rhythm in an informal way, and would alter text that thumped or clanged unpleasantly (unless the writer could persuade me it was intentional). There are some writers, on the other hand, who seem oblivious to such concerns — Theodore Dreiser comes to mind.

  2. I had the same experience, although I twigged a bit before the end. It’s really brilliantly done. (And I tend to subvocalize as I read, so you’d think I’ve have noticed.)

  3. Funny, the first time I saw someone link to it I immediately understood there was going to be a gimmick (or else why would it be shared all of a sudden), and looking at the title gave it away, so I read it that way from the start.

  4. I like to think my inability to predict plot twists is a talent I’ve cultivated in order to expand the range of fiction that I can enjoy. It certainly came in handy here.

  5. Jen in Edinburgh says

    I tried to read it, and it made me feel sort of dizzy.

  6. David Eddyshaw says

    I noticed the gimmick pretty much immediately; I wasn’t consciously influenced by the title, but I suspect that it tipped me off anyway.

  7. Once I noticed what she was doing (maybe two paragraphs in), reading the rest of the article made my skin crawl.

  8. I noticed immediately that the text was oddly written, but I didn’t figure it out until early on the second page. I’m not sure I would have without knowing beforehand that there was something to figure out.

  9. Andrej Bjelaković says

    Man, this tops The Usual Suspects.

  10. @mollymooly: I like to think my inability to predict plot twists is a talent I’ve cultivated in order to expand the range of fiction that I can enjoy. It certainly came in handy here.

    Likewise. I might not notice that the butler Did It, though he was holding a bloody knife, until he’s named explicitly. That certainly happened here on my first reading.

  11. I too have an inability to predict plot twists, and I’m frequently astonished at my wife’s cleverness in that regard. (I’m currently reading her War and Peace, which she’s never read, and she’s accurately predicted several forthcoming developments.)

  12. “…but the most pronounced of rhythms can escape our recognition when they’re reproduced in printing in an article or book.”

    But once I recognized it, I could only focus on the rhythm, losing grip of the meaning for a few minutes. The trochaic octameter is not an easy-going meter. A mixture of non-rhymed iambic pentameters and tetrameters with an occasional trimeter and hexameter would be less intrusive. I’ve come across a novel and a novella written in those meters but typeset as prose. Both in Russian, both by Yuri Davydov (1924-2002).

  13. But once I recognized it, I could only focus on the rhythm, losing grip of the meaning for a few minutes

    Same here. In fact, I think it was the oddness of the rhythm that made it hard for me to hear the rhymes.

  14. Just brilliant!

    I said it in Hebrew — I said it in Dutch —
    I said it in German and Greek:
    But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)
    that English is what you speak!

    But once I recognized it, I could only focus on the rhythm, losing grip of the meaning for a few minutes.

    Yes, I had to re-read for the sense, and stop myself breaking into verse.

  15. Prof. Cutler certainly knew what she was talking about: I read the whole damn piece without realizing what was afoot.

  16. But once I recognized it, I could only focus on the rhythm, losing grip of the meaning for a few minutes

    This is why it’s very hard for me to appreciate poetry.

    In other matters, RIP A.B. Yehoshua 🙁

  17. I read the whole damn piece without realizing what was afoot.

    Many feet.

    RIP A.B. Yehoshua

    RIP. I had the honor of referencing him here.

  18. RIP A.B. Yehoshua

    Damn. I really loved Mr. Mani.

  19. That’s my favorite of his as well.

  20. Kate Bunting says

    I completely failed to notice the trick, and had to re-read the passage carefully to convince myself that it was indeed written in that way.

  21. Apropos of nothing, I looked at some Emily Dickinson poems today and the first one I saw was “I taste a liquor never brewed”. An hour later I picked up a book of translations of her poems into Hebrew by veteran translator Shimon Zandbank, and it opened to the same poem.

  22. Stu Clayton says

    During overindulgence in standard brews, people sometimes imagine things.

    On the other hand, maybe that is clever PR for a start-up brew called Emily.

  23. Bathrobe says

    I guess the point is that if it’s written as prose it’s understood that it should be read as prose. And awkward prose it was, as others have mentioned. Some were quick to pick up on the trick, which is commendable. I was distracted by my attempts to make sense of the content, which I found roundabout and repetitive. Towards the end my attention flagged and I stopped trying to follow the argument, with the result that I didn’t even notice when she told us what she was doing.

  24. Bathrobe says

    Concerning Anne Cutler’s Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words, an endorsement by Ann Bradlow, Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University starts:

    This is a remarkable book that provides a retrospective overview of the core ideas and data that have defined the field of spoken language processing over the past four decades.

    I can’t help feeling that this is understating the case. Somehow a practical approach to how people actually hear language in all its messiness would seem to suggest that a lot more goes into the human ability to “do language” than Merge would have us believe. This is just a feeling. I am sure that someone could disabuse me of this fuzzy notion by showing that the ability to do Merge and the ability to understand the spoken word occur on quite separate planes of language and aren’t really related at all.

  25. Trond Engen says

    I stopped at the unnecessary ‘also’ in line 2. reread and noticed the first pair of rhymes, and from there until the end I couldn’t read for content without going back and parsing carefully. Maybe paradoxically ,I think I would have picked up the content easiy if it actually had been written out in rhyming lines.

  26. Just out, a paper on the genetics of perceiving rhythm. Apparently both central nervous system and motor system play a role.
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01359-x

  27. Good heavens, how interesting: “Genetic correlations with breathing function, motor function, processing speed and chronotype suggest shared genetic architecture with beat synchronization and provide avenues for new phenotypic and genetic explorations.” Thanks for that!

  28. January First-of-May says

    I noticed immediately that the text was oddly written, but I didn’t figure it out until early on the second page. I’m not sure I would have without knowing beforehand that there was something to figure out.

    I also noticed that the style was weird but couldn’t figure out why until sometime around early second page. OTOH I assumed that the feature to be noticed was one described in the article rather than one in its actual text.

    In retrospect I might also have been preconditioned for this being a thing that happens because I was familiar with Kaganov’s odes.

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