Amplitude Modulation Structure in French and German Poetry: Universal Acoustic Physical Structures Underpin Different Poetic Rhythm Structures

French and German poetry are classically considered to utilize fundamentally different linguistic structures to create rhythmic regularity. While German poetry utilizes lexical stress to create prosodic alternation between strong and weak syllables, French poetry relies on accentuation at the level of prosodic phrasing. These differences result in metrical rhythm structures considered poetically to be very different. However, the biophysical and neurophysiological constraints regarding the speakers of these poems are highly similar, suggesting potential similarity at the level of the acoustic physical structures that are produced orally. Here we apply a language-blind computational model of linguistic rhythm based on features of the amplitude envelope to compute these physical stimulus characteristics. The model was applied to recordings of the recitation of metrical French and German poems by native speakers. Poems in free verse were not considered in the study. The results indicated that the poems’ acoustic physical structures were identical for the two languages in terms of temporal modulation patterns in the amplitude envelope. Nevertheless, minor differences in physical structure could be detected by applying further modelling drawn respectively from the birdsong and neural connectivity literatures. The data are interpreted with respect to current controversies in the poetic literature.