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Abstract

In this paper I propose a theory of meter that treats meter as Optimality-Theoretic (OT) faithfulness. At the core of the proposal is the notion of meter as similarity between an abstract metrical template consisting of prosodic structure without segmental content, and the prosodic structure of a line of verse. Faithfulness is the measure of similarity in OT. I develop a general theory of faithfulness between prosodic structures using standard OT tools, and apply it to meter. I test the theory by investigating two aspects of English iambic meters, phrasal peaks in weak positions, and stressed syllables in weak positions. Because many analytically interesting aspects of meter involve gradient preference rather than absolute metricality, the theory is embedded in the multiple-grammars theory of variation. The chief advantage of the present approach is its commitment to the grounding hypothesis, viz. the claim that rule-governed aspects of meter can be analyzed using the same tools as ordinary grammar.

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Notes

  1. This notion is also known by other names, e.g. Fabb’s “development hypothesis”, that “poetic language is formed and regulated by developing only the linguistic elements, rules, and constraints of the language faculty” (Fabb 2010:3).

  2. Readers will notice below the frequent use of constraint conjunction that is necessary in MAF. Each use of constraint conjunction can be thought of as an argument in favor of Maxent grammar over standard OT.

  3. However, see Devine and Stephens (1975) for a different view of traditional metrics.

  4. One tradition where the unit of repetition is selected at the realization rather than template level is found in Classical Sanskrit (Deo 2007).

  5. A pre-generative idea of fully specified templates belongs to Richards (1960[1929]:232); see also Wimsatt and Beardsley (1959). To illustrate the abstract properties of meter, Richards used what he called a “dummy”: a text consisting of nonsense words endowed with English prosody. The following dummy is based on a stanza from Milton’s Nativity Ode: “J. Drootan-Sussting Benn/Mill-down Leduren N./Telambas-taras oderwainto weiring/Awersey zet bidreen,” etc.

    Underspecified templates have the advantage of not burdening the analyst with the grueling task of coining the nonsense words.

  6. Imperfection is due to misaligned bracketing. Perfectly aligned bracketing in iambic meters is impossible in English, because its ph-feet are trochees, not iambs.

  7. Here and in the rest of the paper I assume non-lexical monosyllables to be unstressed, both in verse and in the prose baseline (see below).

  8. A potential problem for this argument is the proposals in Alderete (1997) and Revithiadou (1998) for faithfulness to underlying accents, not just to their position.

  9. As McCarthy puts it, “[a]lthough discussions of stress in OT rarely mention faithfulness constraints, the existence of Ident(Stress) or something like it follows from a basic point of OT logic: any property that a language can use contrastively must have a corresponding faithfulness constraint, since otherwise markedness constraints would always obliterate the contrast… Stress is predictable in some languages, but it is not predictable in all languages, so a stress faithfulness constraint is needed in universal CON” (McCarthy 2008:501, fn. 2).

  10. As defined in (17b), two gridmarks at different levels can stand in p-correspondence. This kind of relation is not relevant for the Max and Dep constraints defined here, but will become useful for Align constraints defined below.

  11. An anonymous reviewer suggests another family of constraints, Coalescence, militating against a single syllable in several MPs. Such constraints would be useful in e.g. sung verse, but not in the data analyzed below.

  12. As an anonymous reviewer points out, perhaps related to such strength effects is the principle of closure (cf. Smith Herrnstein 1968), which implies stronger restrictions at the end of the line. Such effects can also be modeled with positional faithfulness.

  13. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for careful critique that improved this section.

  14. The existence of extrametricality, which adds the option of a line-final weak syllable not associated to a position, does not significantly complicate the matching problem, and in any case does not arise in the case studies below.

  15. More precisely, the inviolable preference is expressed by the conjunction Align(1,2,L) and Uniformity-1. Outside of resolution, violations of Align(1,2,L) are routine; they are avoided only when coupled with a Uniformity violation.

  16. Schlerman’s (1989) data from Webster was not used due to low numbers.

  17. The two components of the model, James and Twain, are quite consistent with each other. The greatest discrepancy between the two prose authors is in the type of wild DUCKS, which is somewhat underrepresented in Twain, but the difference is not statistically significant.

  18. Many of the resulting examples, such as the following, sound quite Frostian: “We don’t/enjoy giving directions in New Hampshire—/we tend to think that if you don’t know where/you’re going, you don’t belong where you are./In Canada, we give directions more/freely—to anywhere, to anyone/who asks.”

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to audiences at McGill, University of Ottawa, and Stanford, to my colleagues at Carleton, and to three anonymous referees. Errors are my own.

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Blumenfeld, L. Meter as faithfulness. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 33, 79–125 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-014-9254-8

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