Global Rhythm

This book presents cutting-edge research on the production and perception of speech rhythm by speakers of English in countries where it is used as a foreign language or an institutionalised second language (also sometimes known as the Expanding and Outer Circles). It contributes to a better understanding of speech rhythm, which has long been recognised as an important supra-segmental category of speech, focusing on its relevance in World Englishes, Second Language Acquisition and learner varieties of English, as well as the sociolinguistic and perceptual significance of this phonological variable.

. An accompanying compact disk enables the reader to work closely with the sound of African speech and song discussed in the book.

The book contains a collection of papers dealing with the question of how rhythm shapes language. Until now, therewas no comprehensive theory that addressed these findings adequately. By bringing together researchers from many different fields, this book will make a first attempt to fill this gap.

Human speech and music share a number of similarities and differences. One of the closest similarities is their temporal nature as both (i) develop over time, (ii) form sequences of temporal intervals, possibly differing in duration and acoustical marking by different spectral properties, which are perceived as a rhythm, and (iii) generate metrical expectations. Human brains are particularly efficient in perceiving, producing, and processing fine rhythmic information in music and speech. However a number of critical questions remain to be answered: Where does this human sensitivity for rhythm arise? How did rhythm cognition develop in human evolution? How did environmental rhythms affect the evolution of brain rhythms? Which rhythm-specific neural circuits are shared between speech and music, or even with other domains? Evolutionary processes’ long time scales often prevent direct observation: understanding the psychology of rhythm and its evolution requires a close-fitting integration of different perspectives. First, empirical observations of music and speech in the field are contrasted and generate testable hypotheses. Experiments exploring linguistic and musical rhythm are performed across sensory modalities, ages, and animal species to address questions about domain-specificity, development, and an evolutionary path of rhythm. Finally, experimental insights are integrated via synthetic modeling, generating testable predictions about brain oscillations underlying rhythm cognition and its evolution. Our understanding of the cognitive, neurobiological, and evolutionary bases of rhythm is rapidly increasing. However, researchers in different fields often work on parallel, potentially converging strands with little mutual awareness. This research topic builds a bridge across several disciplines, focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of rhythm as an evolutionary process. It includes contributions encompassing, although not limited to: (1) developmental and comparative studies of rhythm (e.g. critical acquisition periods, innateness); (2) evidence of rhythmic behavior in other species, both spontaneous and in controlled experiments; (3) comparisons of rhythm processing in music and speech (e.g. behavioral experiments, systems neuroscience perspectives on music-speech networks); (4) evidence on rhythm processing across modalities and domains; (5) studies on rhythm in interaction and context (social, affective, etc.); (6) mathematical and computational (e.g. connectionist, symbolic) models of “rhythmicity” as an evolved behavior.

The intersection of sound processing, speech production, and literacy is a promising and growing area of study. This volume showcases recent empirical research exploring the association between linguistic rhythm and reading. Linguistic rhythm does not easily assume a single definition, which is part of the motivation for this volume, and subsumes constructs including suprasegmental phonology, prosody, intonation and stress. The twelve papers collected here are the product of a gathering of like-minded researchers from the disciplines of linguistics, psycholinguistics, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and education. The resulting chapters cover topics including the following: developmental interactions between linguistic rhythm and reading and spelling, relationships between rhythm and dyslexia, and cross-linguistic variation in the relationship between lexical stress and orthography. This book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the fields of linguistics, human communication, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology and literacy.

Rhythms animate our lives and the worlds we inhabit. Rhythms of getting things done, of working technologies, of day and night and the seasons, and of shared patterns of work, home-life and moving around. Rhythms are also intrinsically about flows of energy – heat, light, motion – from the smallest movements of muscles, to the petrol-fuelled rhythms of the rush hour, the spinning of wind turbines and shifting cycles of solar radiation. This book sets out to energise Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis in order to develop a novel and far reaching polyrhythmic conceptualisation of the beats and pulses of our relations with energy in both its natural and technological forms. Social theory, thermodynamic thinking and diverse streams of energy-oriented research are brought together to trace how the climate crisis has the rhythmic patterning of big power energy systems at its core; and how transitioning to a just, low carbon future means transforming energy systems and our everyday dependencies on them into new rhythmic patterns and interrelations.