Natural rhythmic patterns in English verse: Evidence from child counting-out rhymes

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1988-01-01

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Abstract

Counting-out rhymes are part of an oral tradition whose primary participants are children. These facts are used to justify the claim that the rhythmic structure of counting-out rhymes can be attributed to natural preferences more readily than could the structure of formal verse considered alone. The first study uncovered a number of similarities between formal and counting-out verse. The rhythm of counting-out rhymes is constrained by the principle of rhythmic alternation, the nuclear stress and compound rules, and foot boundaries. In addition, both trochaic and iambic meters seem to exist as natural categories in counting-out rhymes. Finally, children appear to associate different grammatical categories with different degrees of stress, in a manner very similar to patterns found in adult verse. The second study explored the variants of one common counting-out rhyme and reports changes that preserve or improve the poetics of the rhyme. The discussion offers one definition of what a "natural" rhythmic pattern in verse might mean: A pattern that has parallels in the rhythmic structure of ordinary speech. This definition makes the study of verse attractive to psycholinguists for three reasons. First, factors that influence speech rhythm can be examined for their relevance to poetic rhythm, a possibility that renders tractable the psycholinguistic study of one form of language creativity. Second, hypotheses about the rhythmic structure of speech can be formulated from knowledge of poetic rhythm. Finally, studying the structure of child verse could foster understanding of the acquisition of prosodic rules, an area that has been relatively neglected in developmental psycholinguistics. © 1988.

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10.1016/0749-596X(88)90017-4

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Kelly, MH, and DC Rubin (1988). Natural rhythmic patterns in English verse: Evidence from child counting-out rhymes. Journal of Memory and Language, 27(6). pp. 718–740. 10.1016/0749-596X(88)90017-4 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10167.

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Rubin

David C. Rubin

Juanita M. Kreps Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience

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My main research interest has been in long-term memory, especially for complex (or "real-world") stimuli. This work includes the study of autobiographical memory and oral traditions, as well as prose. I have also studied memory as it is more commonly done in experimental psychology laboratories using lists. In addition to this purely behavioral research, which I plan to continue, I work on memory in clinical populations with the aid of a National Institute of Mental Health grant to study PTSD and on the underlying neural basis of memory the aid of a National Institute of Aging grant to study autobiographical memory using fMRI.






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