periodicity (n.)

A term used in METRICAL PHONOLOGY for the repetition of ELEMENTS in a METRICAL GRID. For example, in the grid for the car returned, the bottom-level elements occur four times (the – car – re – turned) and the elements at the next level, higher in the grid, occur twice (car – turned). The notion thus has relevance for accounts of a speaker’s sense of an utterance’s RHYTHMICAL structure.