Re: Conlang Poetry, was Re: language change

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.

It no doubt has something to do with lung capacity -- how much you
can say before stopping to breathe.  It's a natural structuring unit
for speech.

This is for a book on brain function and hypnosis I have -- the fact
was mentioned in the context of how hypnotists structure their
language, and how it is similar to poetry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                       edheil@postmark.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------


Patrick Dunn wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Jan 2000, Brad Coon wrote:
>
> > It might be well to remember that rhyme and meter are far from
> > universals of poetry.  I have seen some arguments to the contrary
> > and don't follow either side very closely, but the last I heard it
> > was generally agreed that rhyme was not a feature of any New World
> > poetry.  For that matter, one could argue that poetry itself
> > is not a universal concept.  Not sure I want to go there but
> > I have heard some very well-reasoned arguments that Art is not
> > universal either, principally dividing into what is art and what
> > is decoration.
> > As for Haiku, impossible in Nova!
> > Just my 2 cents,
>
> Rhymne and meter are certainly *not* absolutes of poetic utterance!
> Meter's close, but not quite.
>
> As far as poetry being absolute -- it appears that poetry is a universal.
> Even languages without writing have concepts of poetry, although they may
> not construct those concepts exactly the same way we do.  I would venture
> that poetry is universal -- by which I mean every culture differentiates
> between every day utterance and formal, usually aesthetic, utterance.
> Prove me wrong if you can -- I'd be interested in any evidence to the
> contrary.