Linguistic and Musical Stress
in Russian Folk Songs
Melissa Michaud Baese1 and Richard Ashley2
Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University1
Department of Music Studies, Northwestern University2
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems,
Northwestern University1, 2
Baese, Ashley 1
Introduction
 Scholars in both linguistics and music cognition have examined whether rhythm
in a culture’s language influences the rhythm of that culture’s music.
o Using Normalized Pair-wise Variability Index (nPVI) (Grabe and Low, 2002).
o Patel and Daniele (2003a) demonstrated by using this index that the nPVI for English
instrumental music is more similar to the nPVI of English language. The nPVI for
French instrumental music is also more similar to the nPVI of French Language.
o Patel and Daniele (2003b) and Huron and Ollen (2003) extended these findings to other
nationalities and time periods.
 These studies only examine instrumental rhythm and do not utilize hierarchical
rhythmic structures that are present in music and language.
o Hierarchical rhythmic structures in music – through metric structure.
o Hierarchical rhythmic structures in music – through stressed and unstressed syllables in
words, and durational and stress differences across words.
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Goals
 Examine how rhythmic structures in
language and music interact when text is
set to music.
o Do text settings reinforce the underlying
rhythmic structures of language?
o Specifically, does the musical structure of
Russian folk songs highlight the linguistic
prosody?
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Methods
Materials:
 15 Russian Folk Songs (Lavaska, 1949; Botsford, 1922)
 Chosen for primarily syllabic settings (one syllable per
beat).
Procedure:
 Each word in each text was marked for linguistic stress
according to a Russian dictionary (**CITATION**).
 Each musical score was marked for musical stress,
separately from the lyrics.
o Unless notated otherwise in the score (with accents,
melismas, longer notes), musical stress was
assumed to be on ‘downbeats’, as appropriate for
time signatures.
 Monosyllabic function words (e.g., prepositions,
conjunctions, etc.) were not marked as having linguistic
stress.
Analysis:
 The texts were compared to their musical score for
matching and mismatching linguistic and musical stress.
 Texts were also compared for rhythmic and melodic
changes between verses.
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Results
 Linguistic and musical stress always cooccurred on the same syllable in each word
of the selected Russian folk songs.
 When material did vary from a syllabic setting
using a melisma, inserting rests, subdividing longer
notes, or otherwise altering the rhythm, this was
caused by a polysyllabic word that, set to the
previous syllabic pattern, would cause linguistic
stress to occur on a musically weak beat.
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Results (Example)

Musical stress is marked with
Linguistic stress is marked with
*
. Text and music from Lavaska 1949.
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Conclusions
 When Russian texts are set to music in
these folk songs the linguistic and musical
rhythm co-occur on the same syllable in
each word.
 Function words are placed on a musically
stressed beat vary rarely.
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
Therefore, text settings reinforce the
underlying linguistic rhythmic structures
of Russian.
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Implications
 Linguistic implication
o If music does reinforce underlying linguistic
rhythmic structures, linguists can utilize text set to
music as a means of examining into inherent
rhythmic structures in languages.
 Musical implication
o The effect of a culture’s language, particularly the
rhythm of the language, on its vocal and
instrumental music can be better understood through
analyses such as these.
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Future Directions
 Examining effects of linguistic stress on spoken recordings of these
texts by native Russian speakers. Is the musical rhythm actually
inherent in the spoken text as well?
 Native Russian speakers will be presented with short songs that match
the aforementioned model and those that do not. They will then
provide goodness-of-fit judgments. This will judge listener sensitivity
to matching of linguistic and musical stress.
References
Patel, A.D. and Daniele, J.R. (2003a). An empirical comparison of rhythm in language and music.
Cognition, 87: B35-B45.
Patel, A.D. and Daniele, J.R. (2003b). Stress-timed vs. syllable-timed music? A comment on Huron
and Ollen (2003). Music Perception, 21(2): 273-276.
Huron, D. and Ollen, J. (2003). Agogic contrast in French and English themes: Further support for
Patel and Daniele (2003). Music Perception, 21: 267-272.
Thompson, D.F. (1997). The Oxford Russian Dictionary: Russian-English, English Russian. Penguin
Group.
Lavaska, A. (1949). Russian in Song. Seattle, University of Washington Press.
Botsford, F.H. (1922) Russian Folk Songs. New York, NY. The Women’s Press.
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