Re: quantitative meter, accent and verse form

William Annis sikayal:

>             1) if anyone has created any languages where vowel
> quantity is significant;
In a couple of sketches, yes, and there's an Italian-like interplay
between vowel length and consonant length in Praçí.  Otherwise, no
(though I have plans).

>             3) has anyone tried to work with formal verse forms in
> their constructed languages?  Successfully?
Yes.  In Yivríndil, a fairly loose stressed-syllable-counting scheme is
used, and I've successfully composed a few poems in it.  But that doesn't
have vowel length, so that might not be what you mean.

However, a friend of mine named Brett created a language named Kalessa
with contrastive vowel length and a verse pattern based on syllable
weight, and he composed a few poems using the scheme.  Alas, he was always
a technophobe, and the project has been abandoned for several years now.

>         While I'm quite fond of Vaior in many respects, I can't see
> anything but syllable counting schemes working well for Vaior verse.
> The variance in word length, and this stress patterns, seems too large
> for other sorts of meters.
>
>         I'm tempted to sketch out some language in the Greek mold, at
> least phonetically, to try out some of these ideas.  Now, I have no
> plans to start composing odes in dactylo-epitrite strophes, but it
> might be fun to pop off with a few heroic hexameters, a feat none of
> my current languages could handle.
Indeed, that sounds like a great idea.  One of these days I'll get around
to writing some Yivríndil epics down.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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