Re: Morae (was: Re: Lurkers, poetic forms)

On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Raymond Brown wrote:

> The problem is that the Latin term 'morae' was originally coined to denote
> a metric unit of classical Greek & Latin verse; we can think of a mora as a
> 'note'. Bimoraic syllables, in this sense, occupy the space of two notes,
> whereas monomoraic syllables are one note long.   In this sense we are
> merely using an alternate terminolgy to that of 'heavy' & 'light' syllables
> (and presence or absence of coda consonant in significant in both
> languages).
It won't have been the first time that linguists have pinched
traditional terms and used them for their own ends :-).

> Latin used syllabic weight also to determine a word's stress accent.
> Ancient Greek appears to have had no significant stress accent, but it did
> have pitch accent; this was not regulated by syllable weight - it was
> regulated solely by vowel length alone.  To produce a simple rule for the
> latter, Allen defines 'mora' simply in terms of vocalic length - hence, the
> confusion, since different authorities have now defined 'mora' differently
> for ancient Greek and use the unit as a measure of two different (and
> unrelated - since pitch accent had no bearing on verse rhythm) features of
> the language.
>
> [...]
>
> Indeed, since - not unreasonably - those not acquainted with the different
> usages of this term are likely to assume that 'morae' in Japanese,
> Shoshoni, ancient Greek, Latin, Eskimo (or any other languages) all mean
> the same thing, when clearly they do not, I wonder if it is not better to
> avoid using the term altogether and talk about either vocalic length and or
> syllabic weight.  Indeed, maybe we need _unambiguous_ terms to mean (a) a
> measure of vocalic length, and (b) a measure of syllabic weight.
>
> Clearly, e.g. some authorities are using 'mora' with meaning (a) in ancient
> Greek, and others are using it with meaning (b).  This IMHO is unhelpful.
Perhaps its just my training, but I don't see a real difference
between the Latin accentuation based on syllable weight and the
Greek system based on vowel length (in principles, not
particulars!). If a vowel is long, the syllable containing it is
heavy. The difference is purely if a language exercises the
moraic coda option, which Latin did, and Greek didn't.

I don't know the history of the term 'mora' in modern
linguistics; but in his grammar of Southern Paiute (1930),
Edward Sapir described its stress system in terms of moras; in
Southern Paiute, like it's cousin Shoshoni, coda consonants
don't count in syllable weight. I wonder if Sapir would have
used the term 'mora' if coda consonants did contribute to
syllable weight in Southern Paiute ...

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu