INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE. COMMON PRINCIPLES

§1. Examples and definitions of rhythm.

§2. Rhythm as a phenomenon of speech.

CHAPTER TWO. PARTICULAR PRINCIPLES

§1. Rhythm in English poetry

§2. Rhythm in English prose.

§3. Rhythm in English oral speech.

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Like any living language that has speakers English exists in two forms: spoken and written. This paper is dedicated to the research of the first form. The plot of this research is rhythm of the English language.

The language itself is a system of signs for a communication. This means that there are two sides using this system: that who produces the information and that who receives it. They are the writer and the reader in written language, and they are the speaker and the listener in our case. Comparing two fields of the language we must find that oral speech is a lot more powerful in transmitting the information than the written one. The reason is that oral speech has more instruments to express a thought. First of all these are the abilities of the voice, and one of them is the rhythm.

The word "rhythm" itself means an order of changing elements. Identical repeating elements are called phases. Rhythm of the language is an order of stresses. To clarify this definition we have to go to another subject of it i. e. stresses. "Stress" is emphasising syllables by the voice. It has aims for the both sides of communication. It is to help the speaker to produce the information without any unnecessary outlays (the Principle of Economy). And the listener accepts the information in its standard format (the Principle of Completeness). The rhythm of speech also satisfies the both sides.

The phenomenon of rhythm is inevitable in the speech of a human being. No machine is no able to imitate human speech. The cause is that words never sound in the sensible speech as though it were in a mechanical row of lexical units. The often occurring mistake among people who study a foreign language is that they pronounce words in such a way as they sound in the dictionary transcription. But to speak the foreign language fluently one need build phrases according to the requirements of the language, and, first of all, to the requirements of the rhythm.

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7. R.Burns 'My Heart's in the Highlands' http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/burns.htm

8. A. Conan Doyle 'Hound of the Baskervilles' http://conan-doyle.narod.ru/1/hound_of.htm

9. James Elroy Flecker, To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence, http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/flecker.htm

10. O.Henry, Selected Stories, М.: "Менеджер", 1999

11. Thomas Moore, 'Those evening bells' and other poems, http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/moore.htm

12. Robert Port, Fred Cummins and Michael Gasser, 'A Dynamic Approach to Rhythm in Language' http://cspeech.ucd.ie/~fred/abstracts/cls.html

13. Franck Ramus, 'The psychological reality of rhythm classes: Perceptual studies', http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003079/

14. William Shakespeare, 'Romeo and Juliette' http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/shakespeare.htm

15. Persy Bysshe Shelley, poems, http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/shelley.htm

16. R.L. Stevenson, 'From a Railway Carriage' and other poems, http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/burns.htm

17. J. Thompson, 'Gifts', http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/thompson.htm

18. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, 'The Gold Bat', http://wodehouse.ru/texts/pg/04_The_Gold_Bat.txt

19. William Wordsworth, poems of various periods, http://fun-english.narod.ru/poetry/wordsworth.htm

Примечаний нет.