Rhythm Reader Pro●

About Rhythm Reader Pro

Rhythm Reader Pro is an interactive model of implicit prosody in silent reading. It is designed for close analysis, teaching, and research rather than as a rule for how a passage must be spoken.

Reading the notation

Every syllable carries values on distinct layers. Word stress (lexical) is the fixed pattern a word has in the dictionary, written with digits: 1 primary stress, 2 secondary stress, 0 unstressed — so banana is 010. Template records the word's preliminary strong–weak preference from lexical stress: happy is SW, above WS, understand WWS, and wonderful SWW. A sequence such as banana (WSW) is not treated as a fifth foot. At phrase level, its syllables are grouped across a boundary—for example, a weak pickup followed by SW—or combined with neighboring words. Beats (rhythmic) show how each syllable is realized in this sentence: S strong, W weak. A word such as of has citation stress in the dictionary but usually receives no rhythmic beat in context.

Phrase prominence is shown separately with ▲. A phrase nucleus may be prominent without occupying a regular metrical beat, so the triangle and beat styling can appear independently.

Feet group syllables across words using only four English patterns: trochee SW, iamb WS, anapest WWS, and dactyl SWW. A phrase may begin with a one-syllable pickup or end with one unmatched syllable when the available text does not form a complete foot. Feet never cross punctuation-bounded intonational phrases; they may cross automatically estimated inner phrase boundaries. Some regular text supports more than one plausible scansion; the app reports that ambiguity rather than concealing it.

Editing

Click any syllable to toggle the selected tier (a beat on the Beats tier; cycle 0 → 1 → 2 on the Word-stress tier). Double-click a word — or use Inspect in the analysis table — to open the word inspector, where you can choose template variants, split or merge syllables, and reset the word to its dictionary analysis. Edited syllables are marked with a dotted underline; every edit is recorded and exported.

The divergence measure

The analysis table reports a Prosodic Divergence Index (PDI): how far the current annotation, after your edits, sits from the fully automatic default, averaged over four components — word stress, template, beats, and phrasing (each 0–1). The component breakdown matters more than the composite: it says which representation you disagreed with. PDI is an edit-distance measure from this model's default; it is not an independent measure of a reader's prosodic ability. In the Phrases display mode, boundaries themselves are editable: click ❘ to remove one, + to insert one.

Research mode

With research mode on (and an optional participant ID), the app records every edit as a process measure: what changed, on which tier, latency since the previous action, the model-fit score of the value being overridden, and whether the edit reverses an earlier one. A recording indicator is always shown while logging — the instrument never records covertly. Export the log via Research session log; it also rides along inside the JSON export. Note the resolution caveat: these are click-level latencies in a browser, informative about deliberation and ordering, not a substitute for eye-tracking-grade timing.

Sources and model fit

Each analysis is tagged with its source: the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, a named fallback rule (for words not in the dictionary), or your own edit. Model-fit scores are heuristic indications, not calibrated probabilities.

Running locally

This file is self-contained and runs offline. For full dictionary coverage (126,052 words), place cmudict.js in the same folder; without it, an embedded subset of common words is used and other words fall back to transparent rules.