Rhythm and Syntax in Verse: English Iambic Tetrameter and Dolnik Tetrameter (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries)

Abstract

This paper addresses two English verse meters: the iambic tetrameter and a tetrameter form of the strict stress-meter (the dolnik). It studies how the accentual, syllabic, and word-boundary types of lines (rhythm) correlate with their part-ofspeech and syntactic composition (syntax). Rhythm in verse is determined by the positions and strength of stresses, the number of unstressed syllables between adjacent stressed ictuses, and the types and locations of word boundaries. One way in which verse syntax integrates into verse rhythm is through the varying strength of syntactic links between adjacent notional words. The typical tendencies are as follows: (1) The strongest syntactic link between adjacent notional words tends to be at the end of the line, and the weakest in midline. This contributes to the tendency toward the dipodic accentual composition of the line, emphasized also by its wordboundary segmentation. (2) The final unstressed interval between adjacent stressed ictuses in the dolnik tends to be monosyllabic. (3) The strong syntactic link between the two final notional words tends to weaken in disyllabic intervals (in the dolnik) and particularly in trisyllabic intervals (in the iamb, when the penultimate ictus is unstressed). For example: Of mountain heath, and moory / thyme (a monosyllabic interval and a strong syntactic link)--And it opened its fan-like leaves // to the light (a disyllabic interval and a weaker link)-And ask your soul ///if it can say (a trisyllabic interval and the weakest link). I am grateful to Professor Mikhail L. Gasparov and Professor Frederick J. Newmeyer, who read this essay in manuscript form and made valuable comments and suggestions. Poetics Today 18:1 (Spring 1997). Copyright ? 1997 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.101 on Sat, 08 Oct 2016 05:55:37 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 60 Poetics Today 18:1