Rules Of Prosody Research Articles

Synaesthetics: Art as Synaesthesia by Paul Gordon

Reviewed by: Synaesthetics: Art as Synaesthesia by Paul Gordon Peter Dayan Synaesthetics: Art as Synaesthesia. By Paul Gordon. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 2020. vi+194 pp. £63.19. ISBN 978–1–5013–5679–7. This book is constructed around a central argument which is both powerful and timely given the current surge of interest, from students as well as academics, in intermediality and its relation to the concept of art. It is that art can be defined as that which is received synaesthetically. By this, Paul Gordon does not mean that artistically sensitive people are necessarily synaesthetes in the sense that they instinctively hear musical notes as colours, for example; rather, he suggests that becoming sensitive to the distinctive quality of an artwork is a process that must engage senses other than those on which we directly focus as we receive the work. This speaks to the presence in art of a kind of operation opposed to what Gordon often calls the literal, or the positivistic, or the rational; art functions, rather, through a kind of metaphoricity which situates its meaning beyond what is physically present. Unfortunately, his work will, I fear, have less academic traction than it might have merited because of the way he argues his case. All such attempts to define art face a challenge: to the sceptical (or academic) eye, it can easily appear that the person proposing the definition has simply decided in advance to limit the category of art to whatever fits the proposed definition. Gordon leaves himself open to this criticism. ‘All “fine art” speaks a language that is not our ordinary language,’ he writes (p. 11). We might ask: what work is that word ‘fine’ doing, and why the scare quotes? Similarly, when he tells us that ‘rock and roll, like all great art, is inherently synaesthetic’ (p. 132), whence does he derive his definition of greatness in art? To state that ‘animals do not hear music’ (p. 150) is to foreclose the question of what music is, in a way that neither Darwin nor Derrida would have found unproblematic. The artworks on which he concentrates date from between 1850 and 1980; why this chronological restriction? He does not tell us. As so often in this book, a perimeter seems to emerge delimiting ‘art’, but it is never explicitly mapped and little is done to dispel the suspicion that it proceeds from a petition of principle. [End Page 693] There are other loose ends and limitations to Gordon’s argument. But the most academically unforgivable defect of the book is, to be blunt, sloppiness. The numerous typos include some hilarious howlers. We find Heidegger’s peasant woman wearing ‘hoes’ instead of shoes (p. 37). Baudelaire’s ‘clarté’ transubstantiates into ‘claret’ (p. 54). Modern linguistics is ‘modem linguistics’ (p. 26). Marcel Duchamp becomes ‘Duchamps’ (p. 125), Jackson Pollock becomes ‘Pollack’ (p. 130), Klee’s ‘Einst dem Grau der Nacht’ is consistently given as ‘Einst der Grau der Nacht’ (my italics). Gordon affirms that Baudelaire’s line ‘Deux larges médailles de bronze’ contains ‘all stressed syllables except for de’ (p. 57); this, according to the rules of French prosody, is nonsense. There are missing and extraneous italics, faults in layout, missing translations, and mistranslations. Such inaccuracies can only encourage scepticism. One could be forgiven for developing the impression that Gordon is content to follow the logic of his ideas without investing the time and patience that academic readers expect, to persuade us that his argument is properly contextualized. This is a pity, because the fundamental point he is making is an important one. Gordon tells us that as we find art, ‘the logical separation between the different sense [sic] is superseded by a preexistent unity’ (p. 79). This concept of art retains its force. Gordon’s book has the merit of putting it centre stage. I hope others will come to argue the case more rigorously, and to situate it more carefully in opposition to alternative approaches to art. The visual artworks referred to in the book are presented not in the form of illustrations, but as QR codes to be scanned. One can see the advantages to the publisher; but...

Stylistics and the cultural context in literary translation

Considering the example of the translation of Njegoš’s The Mountain Wreath into the German language, the paper analyses the translational solutions that are dictated by the principles of the subject. The translator Alois Schmaus chose to take this step in order to bring home to the modern reader a world which appears to be archaic. He made this decision for two reasons. First, the German reader is unfamiliar with the historical context that is the subject of this poem; secondly the rules of prosody in Serbian and German do not match. By choosing to carry over the Serbian epic decasyllable, Schmaus favours the Serbian poetic tradition. From the historical point of view German verse, constructed as an Alexandrine, is burdened with the context of courtly poetics. The hexameter, meanwhile, which was introduced into German literature by Klopstock and later popularised by Voss and Goethe, appears in the context of the rise of the bourgeoisie. Both verses require changes while being translated, which affect the poem’s characteristics. In order to maintain authenticity, Schmaus pleads for the “Serbian trochee”: iamb and dactyl, metrical feet that are closer to the German language, would have impeded the setting the diaeresis and affected the syntax. Because of this, Schmaus places a spondee at the end of every verse and sets the historical context in the tradition of martyrdom.

Особенности поэтической структуры калмыцких народных песен: анализ разновременных записей

Poetics of folk songs reflects the history and context of the artistic phenomena of the Kalmyk people at different stages of its development. It served the basis and determined the essence of national identity, aesthetic criteria and priorities, ideological orientation and structure of art works. This article analyzes the poetic features of Kalmyk folk songs. The article contains a brief historical overview of the issue which is important for understanding its problems and arguments. The study of the poetic organization of the Kalmyk folk song is based on a review of records of Kalmyk folk songs made at different times (1909-1911, 1926, 1940, 1978) and published in collections as well as those gathered by the author during expeditions throughout the Republic of Kalmykia. The Kalmyk folk song is structured in accordance with certain rules of prosody, its rhythm was formed under the influence of not only music as such but also the tread a horse - a constant companion in life of the nomadic Mongolian people. As collective work products, folk songs are characterized by variability - in the content and form. The poetic structure of Kalmyk folk songs is determined by meters that can be viewed as a specific verbalization of a measure compiled in time with the tread or gallop of a horse - a constant companion in life of nomads among whom were the ancestors of the Kalmyks. Texts of Kalmyk folk songs are in the couplet form and contain poetic forms which are as follows: alliteration, anaphora, rhyme, etc. Alliteration and anaphora play a very important role in rhyme formation in the Kalmyk folk song poetry. Analysis of the verse structure of Kalmyk folk songs collected from various sources reveals examples of different forms of alliteration (strophic (between words), internal (between verses), complete, incomplete). Thus, the poetics of Kalmyk folk songs is diverse in its poetic forms and styles. Rhythmic songs organization is particularly noticeable in the beginning, middle and end of the verses. Alliteration (harmony of consonant sounds), widely represented in the Kalmyk song poetry, enhances the expressiveness of the artistic language. Distinguished by vivid poetic structure, Kalmyk folk songs retain a dominant position on the list of song samples recorded during expeditions on the territory of the Republic of Kalmykia in the early 21st century.

Les chants royaux dialogués : typologie d’un hypergenre

Written for the Marian Poetry contests at Le Puy de Rouen in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in order to praise the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, some of the chants royaux use the form of a dialogue. Choosing this particular form has its implications for the structure of the poems. In fact, they are subject to the workings of two contrary forces: one imposed by the poetical structure with its stanzas, and the regular recurrence of the last verse as a refrain - called a palinode - ; the other caused by the verbal interaction by which the discourse is jointly developed by the two speakers. From a body of some twenty already - or not published - chants royaux, this article establishes a typology of the poems depending on their dialogical or monological construction. Three groups are distinguished: when the dialogue format creates adjacent pairs of speech acts, the poems will be qualified as dialogical, a group from which two sub-categories are distinguished, polemic poems and didactic poems. When they simply have alternate speeches, they will be considered polyphonic. In each case is studied the progression of arguments and how the dialogical form enters the rules of prosody.

A puzzle rhyme from 1782

A puzzle of thirty birds, known in many ancient cultures, is found in an Icelandic spelling book for children from 1782, transposed into Icelandic context so well that it seemed genuinely domestic. Its form is a three-verse rhyme governed by complex Old-Germanic rules of prosody. The birds are sold for units typical for Icelandic middle-age trade commodities, used up to recent times. The composition is completely adjusted to the Icelandic culture and may therefore be considered as Icelandic ethnomathematics of early modern times.

Melodic intonation therapy in Persian aphasic patients

Background : Melodic intonation therapy (MIT) is a well-known method of aphasia rehabilitation using prosodically based melodic phrases. The literature includes MIT adapted to many languages and efficiently applied to certain groups of non-fluent aphasic patients. However, there has been no report on the efficacy of the method for Persian-speaking patients. Aims : The objective of this study was primarily to investigate the effects of 15 sessions of MIT treatment (adapted to the Persian language) in selected patients with non-fluent aphasia; primarily on expository speech (phrase length and number of correct content units) and oral expression skills (repetition, responsive naming, and confrontational naming), and secondarily, on auditory comprehension abilities (word discrimination, commands). Methods and Procedures : Participants in the study included seven right-handed Persian-speaking patients afflicted with chronic (>14 months post-onset) non-fluent aphasia. Based on the rules of Persian prosody, MIT was adapted to the Persian language. Using a pre, post treatment design, each outcome measure was tested twice before and twice after MIT treatment. Changes in the variables not treated were also measured as baselines controlling treatment effects. Outcomes and Results : Using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, improvements in the selected variables were shown to be statistically significant after the treatment phase and not during the treatment-free phases. Non-target variables remained unchanged after the treatment and throughout the non-treatment phases. Conclusions : Our study showed that MIT can be adapted for Persian aphasic patients and administered with measurable positive results after 15 sessions of treatment. MIT improved primarily spontaneous speech production, and as minor effects, selected oral expression and auditory comprehension subtests. Therefore MIT might be considered as a method for the rehabilitation of selected non-fluent Persian aphasic patients. More long-term follow-up studies with randomised controlled clinical trials are needed for stronger conclusions.

Des segmentations particulières d'un incunable (1488) à l'écriture du français en unités lexicales et grammaticales

L. Biedermann-Pasques : « From the Characteristic Segmented Forms of an Early Printed Book (1488) to the Writing of French in Distinct Lexical and Grammatical Units » From the analysis of word-boundaries in an early printed book, it appears that, at that time, joined word-forms are, for the most part, due to elision (4.44 % of the sample examined, out of a total of 5.13 joined forms). We try to show how these joined written forms, which correspond to oral elided forms, can be explained by the general rules of French prosody : by the position of the rhythmic accent at the end of each rhythmic/semantic group, and by the regular recurrence of this accent, through the dynamics of the oral language, which is represented in writing by the joining of unstressed, elided elements to the beginning of the next word that follows, in order to produce a single written form. The appearance and the development of the use of the apostrophe in French (borrowed from Greek, where this sign noted elision), between the first third of the 16tb century to the end of the 17th, is symptomatic of a movement towards a more grammatical analysis of the French language, and reflects the necessity of distinguishing more clearly between written lexical units and written grammatical units. In a general theory of writing systems, it can be said that, in the use of the apostrophe, two different principles are at work : the phonetic writing principle, since the apostrophe notes (oral) elision, and the visiographic/semiographic principle, since the apostrophe allows lexical and grammatical units to be distinguished, thus making the task of word-recognition easier for the reader. L. Biedermann-Pasques : « From the Characteristic Segmented Forms of an Early Printed Book (1488) to the Writing of French in Distinct Lexical and Grammatical Units » From the analysis of word-boundaries in an early printed book, it appears that, at that time, joined word-forms are, for the most part, due to elision (4.44 % of the sample examined, out of a total of 5.13 joined forms). We try to show how these joined written forms, which correspond to oral elided forms, can be explained by the general rules of French prosody : by the position of the rhythmic accent at the end of each rhythmic/semantic group, and by the regular recurrence of this accent, through the dynamics of the oral language, which is represented in writing by the joining of unstressed, elided elements to the beginning of the next word that follows, in order to produce a single written form. The appearance and the development of the use of the apostrophe in French (borrowed from Greek, where this sign noted elision), between the first third of the 16tb century to the end of the 17th, is symptomatic of a movement towards a more grammatical analysis of the French language, and reflects the necessity of distinguishing more clearly between written lexical units and written grammatical units. In a general theory of writing systems, it can be said that, in the use of the apostrophe, two different principles are at work : the phonetic writing principle, since the apostrophe notes (oral) elision, and the visiographic/semiographic principle, since the apostrophe allows lexical and grammatical units to be distinguished, thus making the task of word-recognition easier for the reader.

A two-colored brocade: the imagery of Persian poetry

Annemarie Schimmel, one of the world's foremost authorities on Persian literature, provides a comprehensive introduction to the complicated and highly sophisticated system of rhetoric and imagery used by the poets of Iran, Ottoman Turkey, and Muslim India. She shows that these images have been used and refined over the centuries and reflect the changing conditions in the Muslim world.According to Schimmel, Persian poetry does not aim to be spontaneous in spirit or highly personal in form. Instead it is rooted in conventions and rules of prosody, rhymes, and verbal instrumentation. Ideally, every verse should be like a precious stone--perfectly formed and multifaceted--and convey the dynamic relationship between everyday reality and the transcendental.Persian poetry, Schimmel explains, is more similar to medieval European verse than Western poetry as it has been written since the Romantic period. The characteristic verse form is the ghazal--a set of rhyming couplets--which serves as a vehicle for shrouding in conventional tropes the poet's real intentions.Because Persian poetry is neither narrative nor dramatic in its overall form, its strength lies in an architectonic design; each precisely expressed image is carefully fitted into a pattern of linked figures of speech. Schimmel shows that at its heart Persian poetry transforms the world into a web of symbols embedded in Islamic culture.

Aspects of the Rimbaldian Prose Poem: Pattern and Disorder in the “Illuminations”

The article sets out to consider a number of formal features of the Illuminations and proceeds from this basis to suggest an approach to the Rimbaldian prose poem. Central to the paper is the argument that, while Rimbaud clearly turns to prose poetry as a means of emancipation from the restrictive conventions of verse, the Illuminations are by no means an example of random or unstructured writing. Rather they should be viewed as texts in which Rimbaud exploits the freedom from traditional rules of prosody while simultaneously developing new formal patterns which become defining characteristics of his version of the prose poem.The article analyses several specific features of these prose poems which either create recognizable forms or structures in the collection or, alternatively, destabilize them by engendering an artistically fascinating discontinuité. In the former category are included Rimbaud's consciously fashioned beginnings and finales, his numerous litanical patterns and his adoption of the “conte” model in several pieces. In the latter category the paper considers Rimbaud's use of odd or foreign terms, his unpredictable rhythmical variations and his highly unconventional deployment of punctuation. Finally, it is argued that this blend of pattern and disorder is a typically Rimbaldian reconciliation of opposites and a key trait of his prose poetry.Je veux la liberte dans le salut (“Mauvais sang”‐ Une saison en enfer])

Idiosyncratic strategies in sentence production: A case report

In their case study of a patient with selective apraxia of phonation, Marshall, Gandour, and Windsor (1988, Brain and Language, 35, 313–339) reported that many of his utterances were ill-formed syntactically. In this note, a detailed syntactic analysis of his speech is presented. Although the patient's syntax is deviant, it is seen to result from the application of certain consistent, identifiable, compensatory strategies. Moreover, it is shown that the particular, abnormal syntactic structures are internally consistent with his phonatory apraxia coupled with the normal rules of English prosody.

Stravinsky and C.-F. Ramuz: A Primitive Classicism

Aside from a taste for fine paper and simple wines, there were few obvious links between Stravinsky and his Swiss literary collaborator and friend, Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz. Stravinsky was extroverted, socially adept, and direct; Ramuz was introverted, dour, and self-effacing. But from the moment they met there was an immediate empathy. Ramuz mythologized it in his famous Souvenirs sur Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky's testament is found in the extended catalogue of works in which he invited Ramuz's collaboration.1 The close interaction between composer and poet resulted not only in an inventory of greater and lesser works, but also in a mutually evolving aesthetic. Transcending ethnic differences, Ramuz and Stravinsky enshrined both the elemental and the classic within the same aesthetic. If, at the end of his Swiss exile, Stravinsky rejected Ramuz's provincial limitations, the more literal classicism that he evolved in the twenties still owed much to the discipline and freedom from convention they had developed together. The new classicism was defined, in part, in the transposition of traditions of art into new forms. Stravinsky learned that process in the transposition of the elemental materials of folk music or peasant imagery into art.2 Furthermore, the cornerstone work of Stravinsky's new classicism is universally acknowledged as L'Histoire du soldat, the single result of the Ramuz-Stravinsky collaborations in which the writer participated fully in the determination of the work. The gentle Vaudois countryside with its cast of peasants provided the setting for most of Ramuz's fiction, but not his birth and childhood. He was born in Lausanne, on 24 September 1878, the son of a merchant. Though a burgher by birth, Ramuz was a peasant by ancestry and inclination. In the vineyards that had been tended by his mother's people for generations, on the soil that his paternal grandparents had worked, Ramuz found the sole concrete truths that he could nurture into art, and through which he envisioned the birth of a primitive classicism. Ramuz was well into adulthood before he could accept that the sensations he experienced in the Vaudois countryside were a more vital education than the strictures he dutifully accepted at the Gymnasium and Universite de Lausanne. His formal education was classical and doctrinaire. He so capably mastered composition in perfect alexandrines that he persuaded his family to allow him a career in the precarious field of literature. But the classical postures he had acquired were inadequate when the irregular rhythms of Vaudois peasant life naturally suggested a freer poetical form. As early as December 1901 Ramuz found himself questioning the necessity of rigorous discipline: What does it matter if the numerical symmetry of the syllables is always faithful, the rhymes always return, even if it is contrary to preconceived theories and my lively taste for the regular? . . . After all, all interior harmony (the word is ridiculous) being perceptible to anyone, why forbid any research out of fear of the vulgar and uncouth simply under the pretext of rules of prosody and definitive rhythm (Ramuz 1943: 63)?3 The simple recognition that a freer poetic style brought authenticity to his subject matter was not enough to free Ramuz from the metres that had become ingrained in his poetic voice. Remarkably self-aware, even during his apprenticeship, Ramuz recognized that part of his creative struggle would grow from the dichotomy within: the academic versus the elemental. On 28 April 1905 he entered in his diary: I would like to achieve pure sensation: to paint complex things with very simple words; not to describe, but to evoke, and sometimes even to go so far as to break syntax and grammar. I do not try it yet, because of the remnants of my education, but I lean that way (ibid.: 15O).4 Ten years later, through the example of a painter and in collaboration with a composer, Ramuz resolved the dichotomy within. …

Light and Heavy Syllables as Dramatic Colouring in Plautus and Others

Our purpose is protreptic, to broach a subject neglected by researchers and consequently by commentators on Plautus and Terence.1 We mean the relation of rhythm and dramatic meaning in the ordinary stichic iambo-trochaic metres. It is of course a longstanding convention that a commentator writing in usum scholarum will include some account of the basic rules of scansion and prosody and a conspectus metrorum of sorts. Ambitious efforts may be made to analyse the polymetric songs in Plautus, if to label cola is analysis; but there are notorious difficulties in this, for the songs are astrophic and polymorphous, the colometry is uncertain, and it cannot be said that we fully understand the range or relationship of the elements out of which the songs are constructed, or that the rules of prosody in the cantica have been definitively established. Under the circumstances it is understandable that commentators refrain except in the most general terms from relating rhythm to dramatic context in the songs. But it is different with the iambo-trochaic metres. We are on firmer ground here, and there is more of it. Commentators will draw attention to aspects of the playwright's diction such as alliteration, assonance, triadic expression, hyperbaton, and so on, by which emphasis and dramatic ‘colouring’ may be indicated. But very little attention is given to the dramatic and tonal implications of the texture of the iambo-trochaic metres as used for whole scenes or in particular exchanges. This is a pity, because Plautus and the tragedians and even Terence can be shown to have exploited the latitude of realization allowed by ‘the rules’ to underpin the sense of a passage or an exchange.

Towards a Theory of Melody

Given a certain well-defined class of melodies, what are the principles and laws by means of which the metric, harmonic, and tonal facts of these melodies can be derived? The present paper describes an attempt to formulate such a system of rules that specify the logical organization of melodic structure in a set of Swedish nursery songs. Our approach is based on the assumption that fundamental rules of linguistic prosody underlie the composition of such melodies. A large body of metric, harmonic, and tonal data can be accounted for with the aid of this assumption. Our results indicate many parallels between the organization of linguistic and musical structure and support the idea that musical processes cannot be adequately described in terms of Markovian or stochastic models; rather, our results indicate that available evidence suggests that the formal machinery developed within the study of language may turn out to be of value also in the construction of future theories of music. The paper contains taped illustrations of melodies that can be generated with the present system of rules.

Pope and the Rules of Prosody

This paper owes its origin to three statements about Pope:… I find your Practice the Prosodia of your Rules.—Henry Cromwell, letter to Pope, S December 1710.… he [Pope] adhered rigidly to the rules laid down in it [his letter on prosody], both in the translation from Statius and in the Pastorals.-Edith Sitwell, Alexander Pope, p. 69.

The Poems of Galeatius Ponticus Facinus

Some of the Neo-Latin poetry written in the fifteenth century attains real literary distinction, even though the authors may not follow all the rules of classical prosody as they are known to us today. There is also another class of poetry which is less distinguished as literature; but this attracts a certain amount of interest owing to the position of the author, the importance of the men to whom the poems are addressed, or the historical significance of the events to which they refer. The poems written by Galeazzo Pontico Faccino (Galeatius Ponticus Facinus) belong to this second class. The author was active in Padua during a famous period in the history of the university and had a personal relationship with several persons who are better known than he is himself.

Ego Emphatic and Unemphatic

I will make my reply to Professor Phillimore's article of last October as brief as I can. He asks me to answer the question, Why is hunc shortened in Terence's ego hunc vidi, and why is the first syllable of istanc shortened in ego istanc ? adding The fact is (that these shortenings were used by Terence), page 312. But this statement begs the whole question; the only thing that is really unquestionable is that Terence uses a dissyllabic rise or fall of which the first syllable is short and the second long according to the ordinary rules of prosody. All else is theorizing. Havet, Lindsay, and all the other believers in the theory of iambic or breves breviantes assume that the syllables in question must have been short, and then attempt to explain how the shortening came about. I have ventured, in opposition to all this authority, to raise the previous question, Were they really short? I see no reason why we should assume that the purity of the Greek dissyllabic rises and falls was necessarily maintained in the Latin adaptations of Greek meters which the dramatists of the Republican period introduced. They may have been content sometimes to resolve a long syllable into two syllables of which only the first was short, provided that there was in the foot to demarcate the rise from the fall. This something was generally the accent, e.g., in ego hunc vidi, where the sequence _ might be called a semiquantitative anapaest with accexitual indication of the rise; or in ego istanc vidi, where the sequence _forms a semiquantitative dissyllabic equivalent to, but not identical with, Greek rises of the form __. An explanation of how such rises may have read themselves, owing to the fact that the first syllable of this sequence (-) was too short to form a rise by itself, so that the reader was inevitably driven to take in the second syllable as belonging to the rise, is offered in my article written twelve years ago.' There is

Terga Fatigamvs Hasta

When we read the Latin Grammarians' Rules of Prosody, we are puzzled now and then. (They are to be found in the Prosody-sections of Keil's Grammatici Latini, and deal mainly with the Dactylic Hexameter and with Virgil.) One thing that puzzles us is their silence about the features of difference between Latin Prosody and Greek. They often seem to take it for granted that Virgil's Prosody is identical with Homer's. This point of view is perhaps not surprising, since these Grammatici often speak of Latin as a mere dialect of Greek (Charisius 292, 16 K. ‘cum ab omni sermone Graeco Latina lingua pendere uideatur’; Diomede 3II, 3 ‘cum ab omni sermone Graeco Latina loquella pendere uideatur’). But it has its disadvantages. Every scholboy knows that moeniă Troiae is as natural in Virgil as TєίεΧεă Τροίηs would be unnatural in Homer; and every school-manual of Latin Prosody confines its examples of a Mute and Liquid (1) lengthening, (2) not lengthening a preceding syllable to examples of a Mute and Liquid in the middle of a word. If it mentions Catullus' impotenti̅ freta, it calls this a Greek, not a Latin type. Not so the Grammatici. Diomede's examples of a short syllable before FR, FL are (429, 3 K):ore fremebant talia flammato.