Quantitative Equivalence Between Pieces of Speech—with Special Reference to Verse Translation, and Particularly from Japanese into English

Abstract

General hypothesis. The (more or less subjective) quantity of a piece of speech, or the (more or less objective) minimum amount of time needed to enunciate it, is directly proportional to the square root of the product of the number of its syllables and the number of its phones. [Certain conventions are needed about the counting of the phones; and also about the counting of the syllables, though the area of possible doubt here is likely to be smaller.]