LL-L "Memorization" 2011.02.20 (01) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

=====================================================
L O W L A N D S - L - 20 February 2011 - Volume 01
lowlands.list at gmail.com - http://lowlands-l.net/
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Archive: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
============================== =======================



From: Sandy Fleming <fleemin at live.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Memorization" 2011.02.18 (01) [EN]

> From: Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru>
> Subject: LL-L "???" 2011.02.?? (01) [EN]

> Hello Lowlanders,

> Has anyone wondered exactly why poetry is

> (i) easier and sooner memorized,
>(ii) easier and readier recalled and
>(iii) longer remembered?

>What do you think the rythm, meter and rhyme has to do with it?

You seem to be asking about the neurological aspects, but since I don't know
about that I'll just make a few remarks.

People who memorize pi to thousands of decimal places generally swear by the
rhythm method - they just say it in their heads or out loud over and over
again until the sound sinks in and acquires a perceived rhythm (which I
imagine is imposed by them rather than actually in pi, since pi is in some
sense random).

So it would seem that the constructed rhythms of poetry make it memorizable.

My own experience is that rhyme also helps, because when I sing, or recite
quatrains or rhyming couplets, the next rhymed line just springs to mind
automatically given some familiarity with the verse.

This seems to break down with a lot of modern poetry or poetry not slaved to
rhyme for traditional reasons (eg Latin, Japanese).

I find prose practically impossible to memorize (annoying, because I feel I
could learn languages a lot better if I could memorize whole chunks of prose
in them), and I suspect that actors who do a lot of this have developed some
way of thinking of prose in terms of its rhythms, just as pi memorizers find
rhythms in pi.

Do the Chinese and Japanese have traditions of memorizing poetry, or is it
more linked to the structure and beauty of their writing systems? Certainly
I find it hard to memorize short Chinese and Japanese poems (haiku and
suchlike), but the longer poems with longer lines I find easier to memorize
because the lengths of the lines impose some sort of rhythm.

I find the hardest thing in recitation is when the poem or song is broken
into quatrains or suchlike: it's hard to remember how the next verse starts.
The best way is if there's a coherent progression of the argument so that
whatever the next one is is a matter of following the argument. Failing
that, I can always just construct a sentence using a keyword from the first
line of each verse, but such artificial methods of memorization (including
well-known systems such as the location memory system) don't help with
understanding or enjoyment, and can make recall a bit dodgy too when you're
under pressure to produce the next verse straight away.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/



----------



From: Paul Anisman <panisman at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Memorization" 2011.02.18 (01) [EN]

I sent the query posted by Vlad Lee, AKA Totomi Ri,  to a close friend of
mine, Hugh Buckingham, who is a neuroscientist and neurolinguist at
Louisiana State Univ., in Baton Rouge LA.  Since Hugh is not a member of our
Lowland group, I have cut and pasted his response into this post.
--Paul Anisman

Kind Sirs:
It is certainly not just any old poem, verse, or piece of liturgy, but
rather something oft repeated during the life of the speaker.  Poetic verse
with musical surround is music, and, the words in frequently sung songs
often spring up after stroke in later life, because calling up fequently
said or done things eventually gets streamlined in the more automatic cells
of the brain....and most often, those cells are not in Broca's area, but
deeper down in memorial chunks automated in various circumstances as
production.  You also have scatological terms that will pop out as
automata...and a similar phenomenon takes place with theological terms,
excretion terminology, and parts of the anatomy involved in excretion.
 These are in a sense taboo words, and are often learned when the contextual
environment is overladen with emotionality....of one sort or another.

Severely speech apraxic persons with very serious brain damage in the left
hemisphere Broca's Area ( posterior, inferior frontal cortex - numbered 44
and 45 by Korbian Brodmann in the early 20th century)  have quite often been
noted to be able to articulate overly learned "chunks" of soliloquies,
frequently liturgical lines from religious participation.  It has also been
noted that these kinds of patients, when frustrated at their inability, can
curse with the best of them, and with near normal fluency.  These
"formulaic" islands of language production come to be stored in less
volitional zones of the nervous system.  Broca's area is cerebral cortex.
 These abilities are not at all unrelated to Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome
and the frequent finding that people who have severe stuttering can
nevertheless sing, and while singing, they do not stutter.

Poetry quite often for some individual may very well be recited many times
for sundry reasons, specific to that individual.  Furthermore, and very
importantly, the scansion of poetry (the meter) is a suprasegmental property
which scaffolds the poetic segments.  Not only is meter conserved in many
adults with aphasia, but so is their ability to summon up and utilize
syllable matrices.  Many Wernicke's aphasics who are fluent, but who have
extreme difficulties successfully recruiting lexical items during ongoing
speech, will substitute segments from left to right (carry over from
something articulated) or from right to left (anticipating something to be
articulated in close succession).  Syllable phonotactic constraints are
mediated by the brain such that large portions of the left temporo-parietal
cortex can be damaged, while leaving phonotactics untouched.  Often, the
makeup of stretches of speech in Wernicke's aphasics is replete with
alliterative vowel and consonant repetition.

The brain is cool.

Hugh Buckingham

On 2/18/11, Lowlands-L List <lowlands.list at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Obiter Dictum <obiterdictum at mail.ru>
> Subject: LL-L "???" 2011.02.?? (01) [EN]
>
> Hello Lowlanders,
>
> Has anyone wondered exactly why poetry is
>
>  (i) easier and sooner memorized,
> (ii) easier and readier recalled and
> (iii) longer remembered?
>
> What do you think the rythm, meter and rhyme has to do with it?
> Does, say, the meter or rhyme incidence get in tune/resonance with
> what brain scientists call brain electric activity frequencies so that
> neuronal patterns form sooner and easier and stay longer?
>
> (To say nothing of more memorable fresher verbal images the poetry is
known
> for).
>
> Has someone researched the matter? The proverbial British scientist, for
> example?
> Does anyone know any resources a mouse click away?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Vlad Lee aka Toyotomi Ri
> Sakhalin, Russian Far East



=========================================================
Send posting submissions to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands.list at gmail.com
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498
===========================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20110220/fa77585c/attachment.htm>