Ukrainian stress

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

Dear Paul,
I don't recall who performed that song, but I can hear it in my head,  
and I hear a distinct word stress on that last syllable - "garDEN."   
And when I sing it aloud the stress is there too.

As I look at your notation, I see that we may have different ideas of  
what a "foot" is.  Do you perhaps have in mind "measure" instead of  
"foot?"  In any case, Will Ryan has offered more examples, and the  
stress shifts there are very deliberate.  But note that they are all  
at the end of the line.  This is like Russian, where there is a  
requirement that the final ictus be fulfilled (the "law of the end of  
the line" - James Bailey).  It seems, then, that in English as in  
Russian, the law of the end of the line trumps even phonemic stress  
placement.  But in Russian I have found this happening elsewhere than  
in the final foot as well (there are many complications).

Once upon a time I worked out this and related metrical issues in  
great detail (please see various items on the web site).  I do  
remember that the 20 native speakers in one study each grew  
increasingly grumpy as we moved through the 28 poetry selections where  
in half the cases a pronunciation choice HAD to be made between  
violating word stress or violating the metrical rhythm.  And it is  
curious that the three published poets (Sasha Sokolov, Aleksei  
Tsvetkov, Eduard Limonov) shifted word stress significantly more often  
than did the rest of the sample (p less than .025 on Mann-Whitney U  
test).

All of which illustrates Roman Jakobson's 1923 thesis that poetic form  
is "organized violence" inflicted upon language.

Cheers to the list.

http://Rancour-Laferriere.com



On May 2, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:

> Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:
>
>> Colleagues -
>> It happens in English songs too, e.g. -
>> "I never promised you a rose garDEN."
>
> I've never heard it stressed that way. I've only heard
> 	.-.-.-.- -.
> (note that "rose" occupies an entire foot -- either as a long  
> syllable or as a short one with a following rest).
>
> Which performer do you have in mind?
>
> -- 
> War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
> --
> Paul B. Gallagher
> pbg translations, inc.
> "Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
> http://pbg-translations.com
>
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