Sociological Linguistics

Rick Mc Callister rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu
Tue Jun 1 16:08:01 UTC 1999


	I don't know how natural alexandrine meter is. Histories of
versification, which are generally written by poets or literary theorists,
tend to be linguistically suspect. My understanding is that alexandrine
verse can be seen as a stylization of earlier anisosyllablic epic verse
which fixed the syllable count at 2 hemistychs of 7 syllables (if the last
word had penultimate stress) or 6 syllables if the last word had ultimate
stress (which is, of course, how French evolved). The earlier anisosyllabic
epic verse, seen in Spanish cuaderna vi/a, is supposedly based on Germanic
forms. As much as anything else, it seems like cramming 2 lines of ballad
into one line [although the opposite is also claimed re ballad].


[snip]
>Whatever the language has can indeed be used as raw material for the
>culture. So the accentuation of English allows it to "naturally" fall into
>iambic pentameter, French into alexandrines, Finnish into Kalevala metre,
>Italian into Verdi libretti. OE and ON had their huge lists of battles,
>seas, byrnies, and heroes, and used them to wonderful effect. Chinese could
>be shimmeringly ambiguous, if they chose.
[snip]



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