Comparing rhythm and melody in speech and music: The case of English and French

Does the prosody of a nation’s language leave an imprint on its music? We address this question by comparing British English and French, a stress-timed vs syllable-timed language with salient intonational differences. We previously showed that an empirical difference between speech rhythm in the two cultures is reflected in instrumental music. In this study we expand on these rhythmic measurements and provide new data on melody. We compare …