Grammar Of Poetry Research Articles

«Чуть живые, в ночь осеннюю / Мы с охоты воз­вращаемся...»: Предикативный атрибут в поэтическом тексте Некрасова

The main aim of the article is to examine the grammatical and stylistic functions of the predicative attribute in the poetic work of Nekrasov. The study contributes to the general ‘grammar of poetry’, which has been proposed and developed by Roman Jakobson. The study shows that Nekrasov often used the predicative attribute and it constitutes one of the specific features of his style. Grammatically extended adjectival, participial and adverbial phrases, frequent in Nekrasov’s poetry, cause additional predication, which makes it possible to expand the narrative. The predicative attribute often combines the functions of an attribute with those of the adverbial modifiers of cause and consequence, which gives additional impetus to the narrative plot development. The analysis shows that Nekrasov’s style is characterized by nu­merous long repetitions of functionally similar grammatical elements, taking several lines. These repetitions often set the rhythm and determine the folklore character of his poems. Аttributive chains, paired formulas, synonymization of lexemes in chains, repetitions, in­strumental case in the meaning of comparison and metamorphosis can be found in classical pre-Nakrasov poetry as well. In Nekrasov’s poems these features appear in a concentrated, condensed form; they can be considered only against the background of his work as a whole.

GRAMMAR OF TIME IN UDMURT SOCREALISTIC POETRY: GAI SABITOV’s CREATIVITY

This article discusses the individual structural-semantic, grammatical and stylistic peculiarities of the poetic texts of Gui Sabitov, who is one of the brightest representatives of the Udmurt socialist realism. Udmurt socrealistic idiostyles as a national-specific variant of this artistic method has never been the object of interpretation. The relevance of the study is dictated by the insufficiency of the linguistic and poetic approach in considering the phenomenon of development of Udmurt literature, the lack of scientific works focused both on the grammar of poetry and on the temporality category of the poetic whole, its artistic contexts. The article analyzes the multi-level relationship of the grammatical sphere and the artistic semantics of G. Sabitov’s texts, shows the interconversion of form and text content, linguistic elements, the ideological plan of expression and the individual author’s worldview. The novelty is the selection of the main grammatical and lexical segments of the lyrical translation of temporality, the identification of scenarios of individual author semantization of the present tense, the study of Gui Sabitov’s poetic corpus from the point of view of linguistic realities that are projected onto the Udmurt Soviet literature in general.

Sentence judgments and the grammar of poetry: Linking linguistic structure and poetic effect

The present article aims to show that the elicitation of intuitive literary-aesthetic sentence judgments taps into readers’ poetry-specific linguistic register, and how such judgment methods can be used to support and constrain future theory formation in experimental poetics. In two experiments, we examined effects of deviant and parallelistic linguistic features on readers’ grammatical and literary-aesthetic evaluation of single sentences.In Experiment 1, participants rated carefully selected and modified lines of German poetry for either acceptability or poeticity (n = 40 each) on a 7-point scale; original lines featured grammatical deviations that were absent in modified versions. All investigated deviation types reduced the acceptability of the lines, but only routine licenses of German poetry increased their perceived poeticity and showed moderate to strong correlations between poeticity and deviance (i.e., low acceptability).In Experiment 2, participants made forced acceptability (n = 120) or poeticity (n = 120) choices regarding two (out of four) syntactic variants of a single sentence; variants crossed syntactic canonicity (canonical/non-canonical) and sentence rhythm (alternating/non-alternating). Acceptability choices favored only canonical syntax; poeticity choices were sensitive to both variables, and favored non-canonical syntax and alternating sentence rhythms.Our results indicate that poeticity judgments reflect categorical and gradient genre-specific well-formedness (Exp. 1), and that poeticity criteria are similar for traditional verse and for regular sentences without salient genre cues (Exp. 2). The observed prosodic and grammatical preferences suggest that perceptual fluency and conceptual challenge are prototypical characteristics of poetry reading. We conclude that sentence judgments can reveal whether and to which degree specific features of linguistic structure contribute to poetic effects.

Грамматика современной русской поэзии: субъектная перспектива, предикативные категории, модусные рамки (часть 1)

The article is devoted to considering the grammatical properties of Modern Russian Poetry connected with the predicative categories, subjective perspective and modus frames typical of this kind of poetic texts. The above mentioned grammatical devices are viewed in their interconnection with the essential features of modern poetic texts: their subjectivity, multiplicity of interpretation, «modal inconclusiveness», «multiple reference», suggestiveness, double division, increased successivity, small volume and independence of motives. The results of the linguistic analysis are compared with the authors' reflections as expressed in poetic texts, interviews, critical analyses etc, which allows one to assess the value of the grammatical phenomena under study for conveying the «obligatory meanings» of a particular epoch. These results corroborate the special significance of the subject as the category of both expression and content planes, this category being the centre of the «efforts» of all the other grammatical categories under analysis (time, modality, space localization). «The grammar of poetry» is hence treated not as the grammar of «distortions», irregularities opposed to the traditional grammar of the language, but as the realization and the reconsideration of the potentialities and as filling in the lacunae found in the grammatical system of the language, which is carried out by a special group of this language's native speakers for creating new contents and forms, both «eternal» and corresponding to the spirit of the age. What receives special attention in the article is 1) the infinitive and nominative poetry displaying the creative potential of verbal forms of the infinitive and of nouns in Nominative Case correspondingly and 2) the functioning of negative sentences in poetic texts.

Грамматика современной русской поэзии: субъектная перспектива, предикативные категории, модусные рамки (часть 2)

The article is devoted to considering the grammatical properties of Modern Russian Poetry connected with the predicative categories, subjective perspective and modus frames typical of this kind of poetic texts. The above mentioned grammatical devices are viewed in their interconnection with the essential features of modern poetic texts: their subjectivity, multiplicity of interpretation, «modal inconclusiveness», «multiple reference», suggestiveness, double division, increased successivity, small volume and independence of motives. The results of the linguistic analysis are compared with the authors' reflections as expressed in poetic texts, interviews, critical analyses etc, which allows one to assess the value of the grammatical phenomena under study for conveying the «obligatory meanings» of a particular epoch. These results corroborate the special significance of the subject as the category of both expression and content planes, this category being the centre of the «efforts» of all the other grammatical categories under analysis (time, modality, space localization). «The grammar of poetry» is hence treated not as the grammar of «distortions», irregularities opposed to the traditional grammar of the language, but as the realization and the reconsideration of the potentialities and as filling in the lacunae found in the grammatical system of the language, which is carried out by a special group of this language's native speakers for creating new contents and forms, both «eternal» and corresponding to the spirit of the age. What receives special attention in the article is 1) the infinitive and nominative poetry displaying the creative potential of verbal forms of the infinitive and of nouns in Nominative Case correspondingly and 2) the functioning of negative sentences in poetic texts.

Syntactic Aspects of Poetry: A Pragmatic Perspective

The language of poetry is different from the language of other literary genres. That is to say, the grammar of poetry is different. This refers to the fact that the rules of grammars will have to be modified so as to permit certain

Латентная оценка в инфинитивном письме

The article deals with the results of an experiment on modelling the reader's perception of infinitive writing modal semantics. The author argues that the reader's interpretation of infinitive writing bases on connotation semantics of a poetic text rather than on the 'grammar of poetry'.

Response: Theses on Literary Theory

(1) The mannerism ›I’m doing theory‹, popular especially in fashionable circles of American and globalized post-structuralism, has little to do with scientifically sound literary theory: the latter assumes a commitment to clarifying basic terms, employing logically coherent argumentation, and critically testing any hypothetically formulated generalizations. (2) There can be no turning back for literary theory from the achievement of analytic philosophy and its linguistic turn, the effect of which was to make those seeking to construct theories on the basis of rational argument engage in critical analysis of the language they use. (3) There have been several attempts to create a rule-based model of literature (with terms such as the ›grammar of poetry‹, the ›sign system of literature‹, ›poetic conventions‹, and ›poetic competence‹). Various such efforts have been dominant at one time or another; they have also been optimistically put forward in the context of linguistic poetics with an analytic/critical orientation, semiotics, and literary theory aligned with structuralism or systems theory. All such efforts, however, have failed. And they are condemned to lasting failure for compelling reasons: Any literary rule can always be individually lifted and is to this extent merely a quasi-norm with text-internal status or limited scope in the context of literary history. (4) Only with a deviation-based model of poetics is it possible to generalize successfully about literature as an art form. In such a model, literary texts, text events, and textual strategies are described as violations of otherwise binding rules of language, communication, semiotics, linguistic structure, and systems of social action (as cases of exallaxai, priem ostranenija as alienation, desautomatization, actualisace, foregrounding, ecart/Abweichung as functional deviation). Central importance then lies with the resultant poetic blanks (Frege’s Leerstellen), points of indeterminacy (Ingarden’s Unbestimmtheitsstellen), or openness (Eco’s Opera aperta), and their fundamental appellative function (Buhler) or Appellstruktur (Iser) with respect to the ›creative reader‹ participating individually in the making of the work. (5) It will certainly be possible to say this in an infinite variety of different and perhaps better ways in future. But as far as the heart of the matter is concerned, we will not be able to do substantively better than the two central te-

Selected Writings III: Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry

Selected Writings III: Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry

Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry: (Excerpts)

According to Edward Sapir, the juxtaposition of such sequences as the farmer kills the duckling and the man takes the chick makes us feel instinctively, without the slightest attempt at conscious analysis, that the two sentences fit precisely the same pattern, that they are really the same fundamental sentence, differing only their trappings. In other words, they express identical relational concepts an identical manner (Sapir, 1921:89). Conversely, we may codify the sentence or its single words in some purely relational, nonmaterial regard without altering any of the concepts expressed. When assigning to certain terms of the sentence a different position its syntactic pattern and replacing, for instance, the word order A kills by the inverse sequence B killsA, we do not vary the concepts involved uniquely their mutual relationship. Likewise a substitution of farmers for farmer or killed for kills alters only the relational concepts of the sentence, while there are no changes the concrete wherewithal of speech; its material trappings remain invariable. Despite some borderline, transitional formations, there is language a definite, clear-cut discrimination between these two classes of expressed concepts and relational or, more technical terms, between the lexical and grammatical aspects of language. [. . .] According to one of Hopkins' brightest contributions to poetics, his paper of 1865 On the Origin of Beauty, such canonical structures as Hebrew poetry paired off parallelisms are well-known, but the important part played by parallelism of expression our poetry is not so well-known: I think it will surprise anyone when first pointed (p. 106). Notwithstanding some isolated exceptions such as Berry's recent reconnaissance (1958), the role performed by the figure of world poetry from antiquity up to the present time is still surprising for students of literature a whole century after it was first pointed out by Hopkins. The ancient and medieval theory of poetry had an inkling of poetic grammar and was prone to discriminate between lexical tropes and grammatical figures (figurae verborum), these sound rudiments were later lost. One may state that poetry similarity is superimposed on contiguity, and hence equivalence is promoted to the constitutive device of the sequence. Here any noticeable reiteration of the same grammatical concept becomes an

A Postscript to the Discussion on Grammar of Poetry

The linguistic study of poetry is double in scope. On the one hand, the science of language, which obviously should examine verbal signs in all their arrangements and functions, cannot rightfully neglect the poetic function, which together with the other verbal functions participates in the speech of every human being from earliest infancy and plays a crucial role in the structuring of discourse. This function entails an introverted attitude toward verbal signs in their union of the signans and the signatum, and it acquires a dominant position in poetic language. The latter calls for a most meticulous examination by the linguist, especially since verse seems to belong to the universal phenomena of human culture. Saint Augustine even judged that without experience in poetics one would hardly be able to fulfill the duties of a worthy grammarian. On the other hand, all research in the area of poetics presupposes an initiation to the scientific study of language, because poetry is a verbal art and therefore implies, first of all, a particular use of language. At present linguists who venture to study poetic language run into a whole battery of objections from literary critics, some of whom stubbornly contest the right of linguistics to explore the problems of poetry. At most, they propose to assign to this science, in its relation to poetics, the status of an auxiliary discipline. All such restrictive and prohibitive procedures are based upon an outdated prejudice that either deprives linguistics of its primordial objective, i.e. the study of verbal form in relation to its functions, or allots to linguistics but one of the various tasks of language, the referential function. Other biases, which in turn result from a misconception of contemporary linguistics and its vistas, lead the critics into serious blunders. Thus, the idea of linguistics as a discipline enclosed within the narrow limits of the sentence, which consequently makes the linguist incapable of examining the composition of poems, is contradicted by the progressing study of multinuclear utterances and by discourse analysis, one of the tasks which is now at the forefront of linguistic science. At present the linguist is preoccupied with semantic problems at all levels of language, and when he seeks to describe what makes up a poem, then its meaning-in brief, the semantic aspect of the poem-appears precisely as an integral part of the whole, and we may ask why there still are critics who imagine that the semantic analysis of a poetic message involves a transgression of the linguistic approach. If the poem raises questions which go beyond its verbal texture, we enter-and the science of language provides us with a host of examples-into a broader

Teaching the "Grammar of Poetry"

Teaching the "Grammar of Poetry"

Teaching the “Grammar of Poetry”

Teaching the “Grammar of Poetry”