Definition:
(1) In phonetics, the sense of movement in speech, marked by the stress, timing, and quantity of syllables.
(2) In poetics, the recurring alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in sentences or lines of verse.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "flow"Examples and Observations:
- "In music, the rhythm is usually produced by making certain notes in a sequence stand out from others by being louder or longer or higher. . . . In speech, we find that syllables take the place of musical notes or beats, and in many languages the stressed syllables determine the rhythm. . . .
"What does seem to be clear is that rhythm is useful to us in communicating: it helps us to find our way through the confusing stream of continuous speech, enabling us to divide speech into words or other units, to signal changes between topic or speaker, and to spot which items in the message are the most important."
(Peter Roach, Phonetics. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001) - "Pitch, loudness, and tempo combine to make up a language's expression of rhythm. Languages vary greatly in the way in which they make rhythmical contrasts. English uses stressed syllables produced at roughly regular intervals of time (in fluent speech) and separated by unstressed syllables-- a stress-timed rhythm which we can tap out in a 'tum-te-tum' way, as in a traditional line of poetry: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. In French, the syllables are produced in a steady flow, resulting in a 'machine-gun' effect--a syllable-timed rhythm which is more like a 'rat-a-tat-a-tat.' In Latin, it was the length of a syllable (whether long or short) which provided the basis of rhythm. In many oriental languages, it is pitch height (high vs. low)."
(David Crystal, How Language Works. Overlook, 2005)
Pronunciation: RI-them
