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Syllable weight and natural duration in textsetting popular music in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2022

KEVIN M. RYAN
KEVIN M. RYAN*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics Harvard University 317 Boylston Hall Cambridge, MA 02138 USA [email protected]
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Abstract

Hayes & Kaun (1996) argue that the mapping of syllables onto a metrical grid in textsetting is sensitive to natural duration, not just categorical weight (heavy or light). Most of their evidence, however, derives the final lengthening effects, which admit of another possible analysis (Halle 2004). Drawing on a corpus of 2,371 popular songs in English, I confirm that even when one controls for final lengthening and other factors, the setting of syllables to a discrete grid is sensitive to natural duration. Moreover, onset effects reveal that the domain of weight for textsetting is not the syllable, rime, or vowel-to-vowel interval, but rather the interval between p-centers (perceptual centers). Finally, I argue that the textsetting grammar invokes both natural duration and categorical weight; weight mapping cannot be reduced to one or the other.

Keywords

textsettinglanguage and musicsyllablesyllable weightp-center
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 26 , Special Issue 3: Verse structure and linguistic modelling , September 2022 , pp. 559 - 582
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author, 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers at ELL for their insightful feedback on an earlier draft of this article, which inspired several improvements.

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