Music and Speech Rhythms

Music and speech have long been thought to have common cognitive underpinnings, and recent work demonstrates that the music of expert composers reflects the speech rhythm of their native language (Huron & Ollen, 2003; Patel & Daniele, 2003). In my current work we ask monolingual English speaking music novices to compose simple “English” and “French” tunes on a piano keyboard. The rhythms produced reflect speech rhythms perceived in English and French respectively. Yet, the pattern was opposite that produced by expert English and French composers and opposite that predicted by the acoustic determinants of speech rhythm that specify English speech as more rhythmically varied than French. Surprise recognition tests two weeks later confirmed that the music-speech relationship remained over time. We then had participants rate the rhythmic variability of French and English speech samples. We found that native English speakers perceived French as more variable than English despite the measured greater variability of English. Finally, working with Pascale Lidji at McGill University, we repeated these procedures with a sample of monolingual French speakers and found similar, but opposite effects. The results suggest that common cognitive underpinnings of music and speech rhythm are more widespread than previously thought, and that novice rhythm production in music is concordant with perceived speech rhythms. This work is currently in progress and funded by the National Science Foundation.