Re: quantitative meter, accent and verse form

William Annis escreva:
>  >Yes. In Aredos vowel quantity is phonemic, distinguishing such minimal
>  >pairs as cúros "hunting dog" and curos "nail" or zéhos "plague" and zehos
>  >"earth"
>
>         Ah.  Lovely.  Is Aredos documented on the web anywhere?  A
>quick web search found lots of texts in spanish, then references to
>this list. :)
Not yet- do you know how difficult it is to satisfyingly document a
language with a classical syntax, huge lexicon and about 1000 seperate verb
forms? <g>


>  >The feet used in Aredos poetry were:
>  >
>  >uistis (Dactyl, lit. "finger")  long-short-short
>  >spendátom (Spondee, lit. "sacrifice")  long-long
>  >anguella (Iamb, lit "eel")  short-long
>  >cersens (Trochee, lit. "running")  long-short
>  >
>  >These were combined to form three "schools" of verse: uistialicos,
>  >anguellalicos and cersentalicos, which I generally refer to as dactylic,
>  >iamic and trochaic.
>
>         Interesting.  My goal is to one day create a language where I
>can use the ithyphallic meter.
!!! Erect-penis meter?

>Which, as I recall, is - . - . -,
>usually embedded in larger metrical forms.  The Aeolic metrical style
>is cool, too.  Sapphic hendecasyllabics all the way!  (A line you'll
>not likely hear shouted anywhere but here.)
I confess, Aredos metre is based on Latin and Sanskrit models rather than
Greek. I've only very recently began looking at Ancient Greek poetics.

>  >Dactylic verse was made up by dactylic pentameter and hexameter. Dactylic
>  >hexameter is the most commonly used form, and in addition to secspedés
>  >uistiro (dactylic hexameter), it was also called metrom aredom "the perfect
>  >metre". The first four feet may be dactyls or spondees, the fifth is always
>  >a dactyl and the sixth a spondee.
>
>         So, Homer, basically.
Virgil. <g>

>  >Here's an example of a line in secspedés uistiro:
>  >
>  >té caiemó ia huezemcue inuécos tuos ó iuvene est mí
>   -   . . -  .   . _  .  .  - .   .   -  .  .  -  -
>        I assume prevocalic 'i' and 'u' are semivowels?  At about "ia
>huezemcue" I start to lose confidence in my scanning.  Especially
>since if 'u' is vocallic, I'd expect the first syllable of 'inuécos'
>to be long.
It is. However, it is only long because the preceding vowel was elided.
Prevocalic 'i' and 'u' are indeed semivowels. I've written the line out
again below, using slashes to seperate each foot, X to mark the caesura and
tremas over vowels to mark elesion. There was also a typo or two in there-
tuos and inuécos. "tuos" should not be there at all- it's only because I
was writing it from memory, the posession is implied not stated outright.
"inuécos" should be in the accusative plural, not the nominative singular,
thus "inuécons":

té caie/mó ia hue/zemcuë in/uécons/ ó iuve/në est mí

Literally: I love you and yet I ask of your desires: o young man are they mine?

>  >I adore you, young man, but yet I ask, is your desire truly for me?
>
>         Even the subject matter matches the Greek Anthology. :)
Conhistorically, the poet who wrote this line, Arió Mósios Caertaldos, is
an "analogue" of my own favourite Latin poet, Catullus. This line comes
from his "Crescentios" sequence, written during his love affair with the
youth Caios Crescentios Mezaros. The other famous "sequence" is his
"Aglaia" sequence, written about a young married Carastan noblewoman (i.e.
the Juventius and Lesbia sequences in Catullus).

Dan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
semo la flamma, semo la casea
semo la tuta, semo la cambea

We are the spark, we are the flame
We are the people, we are the change

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