Prosodic Rules of wolofal Compositions

Abstract

Abstract The paper focuses on the prosodic norms that rule the formation of the metrical patterns of wolofal verses. Wolofal is a genre, developed between 1800 and 1900 in Senegambia, of poetry in Wolof but composed according to Arabic metrical schemas and stanzas. From the beginning this genre used al-Ḫalīl’s metres, widely employed in Classical Arabic literature: it was therefore necessary for wolofal poets to elaborate a prosodic norm that allowed them to use the Arabic metres with their language’s phonology. Among the phonological particularities of Wolof one finds the syllabic structures CVC and CVCC, the possibility of crasis between different words, and the particular phonological status of prenasalised and geminate consonants. All these peculiarities have certain consequences for the metric and prosodic organisation of the verse, which will be analysed here both through metrical analysis of the texts studied, and by looking at the orthography adopted for the transcription of these poems in Arabic script.