Re: Tone Rhyme (was: POETRY/TRANS.: 2 poems & "googogigglabyte")

Steg Belsky sikyal:

> Hmmm... talking of Chinese poetry, does anyone know if there's such a
> thing as "tone rhyme" in tone (static or contour) languages?  So, for
> instance, instead of rhyming lines by having them end in the same
> sequence of consonants and/or vowels, they would end in the same sequence
> of tones?
This exists in Thai poetry, which has various forms that constrain both
the number of syllables in the line and the tones which must occur at each
position.  The Thai poetic system is quite elaborate, and is explained in
pretty good detail at
http://thaiarc.tu.ac.th/host/thaiarc/poetry/poem.html.  This page claims
that a few of the Thai forms have also been borrowed from Chinese, which
would suggest that Chinese does something similar.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

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