Re: quantitative meter, accent and verse form

William Annis escreva:
>            1) if anyone has created any languages where vowel
>quantity is significant;
Yes. In Aredos vowel quantity is phonemic, distinguishing such minimal
pairs as cúros "hunting dog" and curos "nail" or zéhos "plague" and zehos
"earth"

>            2) if so, was stress or pitch accent employed, or none at
>all; and finally
In the earliest stages of the language pitch-accent was employed, and the
rules for determining where this accent lay were fiendishly complex, with
rules differing for substantives and verbs:

In Aredos morphology, the strong cases of the nominal paradigm are the
nominative and accusative, while the remaining cases are weak. The position
of the accent was mobile, occurring on one part of the noun in the strong
cases and another part in the weak cases.

Nouns can be divided into two types when dealing with the accent:
proterodynamic and heterodynamic. Proterodynamic nouns are the nouns with
-i- or -u- in the final part of the nominative case, like percus, or
clácia, or zétis. All other nouns are heterodynamic. Proterodynamic nouns
place the accent on the first syllable of the word in the strong cases and
the final vowel of the inflectional ending in the weak cases.

Heterodynamic nouns on the other hand place the accent on the penultimate
syllable in the strong cases and on the final vowel of the inflectional
ending in the weak cases.

In early Aredos, it seems that the verb was not accented when in its normal
position (final). However, when the language required that all lexical
items be stressed, the original accent pattern had been forgotten, so a new
system was developed. Under this system, the accent was placed on the
plural verbal inflections; otherwise, the penultimate (or antepenultimate
if the penultimate was light) syllable carried the accent.


>            3) has anyone tried to work with formal verse forms in
>their constructed languages?  Successfully?
Yes. Like Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, Aredos verse was quantitative; that is
to say, it is based on arrangements of long and short syllables.

It is a convention to use English translations of the Aredos names for long
and short syllables; that is, "heavy" (gurus) for "long" and "light"
(lehua) for "short".

A syllable is heavy if it has a long vowel or a diphthong, or if the vowel
is followed by a consonant cluster, not including a liquid.

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.

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.

Dactylic pentameter is slightly more complex. It consists of two feet,
which are either dactyls or spondees, a heavy syllable, two dactyls and a
heavy syllable. When preceded by a dactylic hexameter, the two form an
elegaic couplet, used mainly for love poetry, ruziata and occasional pieces.

Here's an example of a line in secspedés uistiro:

té caiemó ia huezemcue inuécos tuos ó iuvene est mí
I adore you, young man, but yet I ask, is your desire truly for me?

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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