Rhythm crucial in drummed speech
(WorldNews Netherlands)

25 April 2018 How can an entire language be mapped onto beats on two drums? To answer this question, linguists Frank Seifart from the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Julien Meyer from the Université Grenoble Alpes and colleagues carried out research into the drummed speech system of the Bora people of the Northwest Amazon. What they found was that the Boras not only reproduce the melody of words and sentences in this endangered language, but also their rhythm. This suggests the crucial role of linguistic rhythm in language processing has been underestimated. The researchers` results were...