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Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2007. / "Graduate Program in Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-74).

This thesis consists of a selection of original poems and an introductory essay which treats the subject of poetic form and sets out an original system of verse notation, called "Stacked Verse" which is used in laying out the poems. The essay may be summarized as follows. Verse, in its widest definition, is language whose sound form has been ordered or stylized for special aesthetic effect. Because verse is a time art, its essential form is a rhythm, that is, a chronological set of points and their intervals. These points may be marked by any significant feature of the language, although in English verse the speech feature most commonly used as a basis for measure is syllable stress. Yet this term is ambiguous because in English speech there are two different systems of relative stress patterning operative at the same time. On one hand there is the relative stress within individual words. This type of patterning, which we call "word stress", is stable within the language, and has functioned as the basis of traditional English metre. The other system of relative stress patterning, which we call "rhetorical stress", varies according to the speaker and the occasion. Rhetorical stress patterning is a matter of syllable groups, pauses, and equal time intervals between heavily stressed syllables. When this type of patterning is stylized we get what is known as "strong stress" verse measure. Although this latter type of measure has not occurred extensively in English verse since Chaucer's time, it has nevertheless come down to us in folk verse and in the work of such poets as Langland, Skelton, Coleridge and Hopkins, and is being practised increasingly by poets in our own day. This brings us to the question of variable, as opposed to regular, form. The stylization of speech features does not necessarily imply regularization. The prevalence of run-on line endings both in strong stress poetry of the Anglo-Saxons and in metred blank verse since Shakespeare's day testifies to the fact that regularity has never been an indispensable feature of English verse. Closely associated with variable verse measure is the theory of organic form. A poet may either begin his composition with some fixed model in mind, or he may choose to compose in utter freedom, letting the poem take the shape which his emotion, not his conscious intellect, gives it. The measure of this latter type of composition will naturally be variable, but if it is also to be organic in the sense of being truly correlative to the poet's emotion it must be based on a feature of the language that does in fact vary according to an individual's emotional condition. Such a speech feature is rhetorical stress patterning, and therefore a validly organic verse form would be one based on variable strong stress measure. The reason this type of measure is still relatively unrecognized is because it cannot be represented on the page by conventional transcription methods, our writing system being inadequate in marking the variable rhetorical stress patterns of English speech. Because the following poems have their verse forms based on such variable strong stress measure, the writer has found it necessary to devise a system of verse notation which will handle this type of verse form on the page. The writer calls this notation "Stacked Verse". / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Bilingual and multilingual research has mainly focused on segmental phonology, vocabulary and syntactic structures. The acquisition of native-like prosodic patterns has often been taken for granted. A study of prosodic features is particularly relevant since many children born into families of non-native speakers acquire English as a first or second language alongside the family or local language. Previous research has mainly identified general trends and found that children as a group are mainly accurate in their comprehension or production, but few studies have tried to go into detail and examine prosodic features in individual children. This thesis investigates the acquisition of prosodic parameters in two multilingual children, aged 10;5 and 9;5, learning English alongside Standard Chinese and Cantonese. Their data are compared with data from monolingual native-speakers and Cantonese speakers of English (L2 learners). Controlled experiments using minimal pairs and testing both comprehension and production of prosodic phrasing (“chocolate biscuits and milk” vs. “chocolate, biscuits and milk”) and compound vs phrasal stress (“hot dog” vs. “hot dog”) were conducted with each respondent. Praat phonetic analyses of the output and acoustic measurements were combined with auditory observations and listeners’ disambiguation. Comprehension was tested in identification tasks drawing on prosodic cues only. Results indicated that the multilingual children were less successful in using pitch movements to signal prosodic boundaries and convey compound and phrasal rhythmic patterns that the monolingual children. In terms of segmental and pause durations, and final-syllable lengthening, both multilingual children showed more consistency in their production. This supports previous monolingual research (Peeppé et al., 2000; Danbovicová et al., 2004) that temporal cues are more systematically used and more reliable disambiguating factors, which many contribute to their earlier acquisition (Vihman, 1996). In addition, the ability to accurately produce rhythmic patterns of compounds and phrases may develop at an even later stage in multilingual that in monolingual acquisition (Atkinson-King, 1973; Vogel & Raimy, 2002). Compared to L2 learners, the multilingual children have a well-differentiated English phonology with subtle evidence for language transfer (e.g., strengthening of unstressed vowels and tone on unstressed syllables) and deceleration (e.g., less stable or consistent production of single-stressed compounds). The L2 learners, although sensitive to contrasts in pitch, duration and lengthening, many never fully develop the ability to manipulate prosodic cues in a native-like way. Comprehension tests reveal that the relationship between perception and production of the same feature is no straightforward. Good perception does not mean accurate and unambiguous production while unsuccessful perception does not imply inaccurate and ambiguous production while unsuccessful perception does not imply inaccurate and ambiguous output. This thesis examines children’s perception and production of prosody, and contributes some detailed insights into prosodic development of monolingual, multilingual, and L2 learners. The results not only have implications for theoretical conceptualizations of language acquisition, but also provide relevant information for language instructors and testing specialists who develop assessment materials for children. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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This project focuses on the importance of reading fluency, emphasizing its role in the construction of meaning and aiding in the overall comprehension process. Its components: accuracy, automaticity, and prosody are examined in relation to various activities that enhance each component. A sample curriculum is discussed.