> Ed Heil wrote:
> >
> > Something like meter is a near universal. If you look at poetic forms
> > worldwide you find "lines" -- units of speech and thought -- a few
> > seconds long. They're the building blocks of poetic forms worldwide,
> > whether they are defined in terms of feet, of units of parallelism, of
> > numbers of morae, of numbers of syllables, of stress units, etc.
> >
>
> Lines I won't argue with, what I had mind though was more along
> the lines of patterned stressed syllables. I am supposedly working
> with what are likely the oldest Aztec songs/hymns and line length is
> quite variable. There are a lot factors at work here including
> the fact that the Nahuatl is so archaic that a later commentary
> by native speakers includes words to the effect of "we don't know
> what these words mean" :) There are a number of so-called vocables,
> meaningless syllables, usually after words but sometimes inserted
> in words, that may or may not indicate some kind of rythmn. And there
> is at present, no way of knowing just when the vocables were introduced
> and if they messed up a regular pattern of line length. Or for that
> matter how or if they were stressed.
>
> There is evidence the songs were accompanied by dancing but just about
> anything dealing with Aztec music is wildly speculative.
> --
> Brad Coon
> bradandjen@imt.net
>
http://www.fortunecities.com/rivendell/everquest/624 (My conlang and
> conculture pages)
>
> If its tourist season, why can't we shoot them?
>