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iljena verse form

From:Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 2, 2006, 10:43
I had a thought about poetry in iljena, my clause-chaining monovalent alien
language over the weekend. As has previously been mentioned, every word in
iljena is both a noun and a verb, with the noun-like part being a
triconsonantal root, and the verb-like part being the vowel pattern. Each
word in a sentence describes the role played by a participant in the action
of the sentence. There are therefore 12 possible word-shapes in iljena

CCVC
CCVCV
VCCVC
VCCVCV
CVCC
CVCCV
VCVCC
VCVCCV
CVCVC
CVCVCV
VCVCVC
VCVCVCV

I therefore came up with the idea that iljena verse would be based on
couplets with matching word shapes in each line. For example, if one
couplet begins with the line

wtigu esnas oswive unves
student-see teacher-have ice-compose ship-come
"The student saw the teacher's ice-ship coming"
the next line must follow the pattern

CCVCV VCCVC VCCVCV VCCVC.

Different verse forms might vary the number of times a line pattern is
repeated before a new one is introduced, or might use more complex
arrangements of line patterns such as
ABACACABA.

Pete