Re: poetry

lucasso wrote:

>old poetry in IE langs was based on rhymes or syllabotonism(?)(the same
>structure of stressde or long&short syllabes in one line(i don't know the
>better term and dictionary is too far from my comp -_-'))
>
>but many languages have rules of stress or of endings that makest such
>poetry not possible, so how may look that poetry?
>what about poetry in conlangs?
I'm toying with the idea of making Tokana poetry alliterative, something
like: five stressed syllables per line, where the second, fourth, and
fifth stressed syllables must begin with the same consonant sound.  Or
something more complicated, like a 'couplet' of the above lines, where
in addition to the alliterations within each line, the first and third
stressed syllables of the first line alliterate with those of the second
line.  I have yet to try out this scheme, however...

Given that Tokana has (a) lots of inflectional suffixes, (b) a limited
inventory of sounds and syllable types, and (c) a somewhat flexible word
order, I don't think terminal rhymes would be very difficult or very
exciting.  Alliteration holds more promise.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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