Metrical alignment
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Kristin Hanson
Abstract
More fundamentally, why is bracketing, both in the linguistic representation and in the metrical pattern, a necessary ingredient of metrical form? The answer to this question, if ever found, will form a central part of the theory of universal metrics. Bruce Hayes (1989: 258) French and Italian decasyllabic meters include obligatory constraints on the placement of caesuras. The English iambic pentameter is historically modeled on these meters, but does not overtly share these constraints. However, choices about caesura placement do have profound aesthetic effects in English poetry, and conformity to the Romance constraints is statistically significant (Duffell 2000). Here I suggest that properly formalizing the Romance constraints illuminates their formal role in English. First, I propose that the universal theory of poetic meter in Hanson & Kiparsky (1996) incorporate a family of metrical constraints parallel to the general alignment constraints which have been posited for grammar (McCarthy & Prince 1993). Then I revisit the longstanding question of why English poets allow exceptions to their meter’s cardinal rule on stress placement specifically for initial syllables, and suggest that the Romance constraints persist covertly as the conditions licencing these exceptions, precisely because the exceptions and the constraints accomplish a common end of signalling metrical boundaries. In this way, exceptions Hayes (1989) attributes to a general aesthetic tendency to allow beginnings to be lax may be grounded more directly in grammar.
Abstract
More fundamentally, why is bracketing, both in the linguistic representation and in the metrical pattern, a necessary ingredient of metrical form? The answer to this question, if ever found, will form a central part of the theory of universal metrics. Bruce Hayes (1989: 258) French and Italian decasyllabic meters include obligatory constraints on the placement of caesuras. The English iambic pentameter is historically modeled on these meters, but does not overtly share these constraints. However, choices about caesura placement do have profound aesthetic effects in English poetry, and conformity to the Romance constraints is statistically significant (Duffell 2000). Here I suggest that properly formalizing the Romance constraints illuminates their formal role in English. First, I propose that the universal theory of poetic meter in Hanson & Kiparsky (1996) incorporate a family of metrical constraints parallel to the general alignment constraints which have been posited for grammar (McCarthy & Prince 1993). Then I revisit the longstanding question of why English poets allow exceptions to their meter’s cardinal rule on stress placement specifically for initial syllables, and suggest that the Romance constraints persist covertly as the conditions licencing these exceptions, precisely because the exceptions and the constraints accomplish a common end of signalling metrical boundaries. In this way, exceptions Hayes (1989) attributes to a general aesthetic tendency to allow beginnings to be lax may be grounded more directly in grammar.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgments xiii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Isochronous metrics
- Textsetting as constraint conflict 43
- Comparing musical textsetting in French and in English songs 63
- Bavarian Zwiefache 79
- Natural Versification in French and German counting-out rhymes 101
- Minimal chronometric forms 123
- Symmetry and children’s poetry in sign languages 143
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Part II. Prosodic metrics
- Pairs and triplets 167
- Generative linguistics and Arabic metrics 193
- On the meter of Middle English alliterative verse 209
- The Russian Auden and the Russianness of Auden 229
- Towards a universal definition of the caesura 247
- Metrical alignment 267
- Rephrasing line-end restrictions 287
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Part III. Para-metrical phenomena
- Pif paf poof 307
- The phonology of elision and metrical figures in Italian versification 325
-
Part IV. Macrostructural metrics
- Convention and parody in the rhyming of Tristan Corbière 337
- The metrics of Sephardic song 355
- A rule of metrical uniformity in old Hungarian poetry 371
- Metrical structure of the European sonnet 385
- Persons index 403
- Languages index 411
- Subjects index 415
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgments xiii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Isochronous metrics
- Textsetting as constraint conflict 43
- Comparing musical textsetting in French and in English songs 63
- Bavarian Zwiefache 79
- Natural Versification in French and German counting-out rhymes 101
- Minimal chronometric forms 123
- Symmetry and children’s poetry in sign languages 143
-
Part II. Prosodic metrics
- Pairs and triplets 167
- Generative linguistics and Arabic metrics 193
- On the meter of Middle English alliterative verse 209
- The Russian Auden and the Russianness of Auden 229
- Towards a universal definition of the caesura 247
- Metrical alignment 267
- Rephrasing line-end restrictions 287
-
Part III. Para-metrical phenomena
- Pif paf poof 307
- The phonology of elision and metrical figures in Italian versification 325
-
Part IV. Macrostructural metrics
- Convention and parody in the rhyming of Tristan Corbière 337
- The metrics of Sephardic song 355
- A rule of metrical uniformity in old Hungarian poetry 371
- Metrical structure of the European sonnet 385
- Persons index 403
- Languages index 411
- Subjects index 415
