Re: Conlang Poetry, was Re: language change

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?