Rhythmic characteristics of prose and verse in varieties of Portuguese

Abstract

Whether varieties of Portuguese differ in their rhythmic classification is not entirely clear. European Portuguese is generally considered to employ stress‐based rhythm whereas the rhythmic classification of Brazilian Portuguese is disputed. Acoustically‐based measures of rhythm have usually employed spoken prose passages for language samples. Possibly, the apparent rhythmic characteristics of language varieties may be clarified by employing different types of language materials. We selected spoken prose and traditional verse for investigation. Five native speakers of European Portuguese and five native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese recorded a sonnet consisting of 154 syllables and a short prose passage consisting of 270 syllables. From these recordings, acoustically based rhythm metrics, as suggested by Ramus, et al. [Cognition 73, 1999, 265‐292] and Ling, et al. [Language and Speech 43, 2000, 377‐401] were calculated. Measures of consonantal duration variability increased from spoken prose to spoken verse, suggesting that the talkers employed slower, more clearly articulated speech in reading the poem than in reading the prose passage. However, the two tasks did not clearly distinguish between the two varieties of Portuguese.