Where does meter collide?

In the study of verse, meter is the rhythmic pattern of a line: the regular arrangement of stronger and weaker syllables, grouped into repeating units called feet, as in the five iambic feet of a line of iambic pentameter. Hanson and Kiparsky's 1996 A Parametric Theory of Poetic Meter treated a meter as a system of rules that maps the stresses of ordinary language onto an abstract rhythmic template, and showed how languages and traditions vary those rules. The referent is an organised rhythm of language recovered by scanning a line, and it is not a unit of physical length, a scheme of musical beats, or an instrument that measures.[1]

Unit

A line's rhythmic template, counted in metrical feet

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Recovered by scansion, marking stressed and unstressed syllables and grouping them into feet

In music, meter is the recurring pattern of strong and weak beats that organises time into equal measures, the framework a listener feels as the steady grouping behind a rhythm and that a score marks with a time signature such as 4/4 or 3/4. London's 2012 Hearing in Time argued that meter is not written into the notes themselves but is a pattern of expectation in the listener, a learned way of attending to beats in periodic cycles. The referent is a felt temporal framework of beats, described by its grouping and tempo, and it differs from a standard of length, the rhythm of spoken verse, or a measuring device.[2]

Unit

A repeating cycle of strong and weak beats, one measure per cycle

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Notated by a time signature and inferred by listeners from accent, grouping, and tempo