Talk:Sapphic stanza

Greek-Vedic resemblance

As an example of the resemblance between Aeolic and Vedic metrics, replacing -u-x with x-u- at the beginning of one of the first three lines of a Sapphic verse turns it into a pada of Trishtubh. This happens in the second line of the Kipling example here and in the second line of the first verse of the Watts example.

Hieronymus Illinensis (talk) 19:10, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Application of length-based metrics to stress-timed languages

Given that some English examples are provided, it would be of use to explain how a metre based on syllabic length is of application in English, which doesn't have clear long and short syllables. I assume it's a stress equivalence, perhaps? 213.60.74.178 (talk) 08:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

One's first instinct is to say stress has to take the place of quantity/syllable weight. There is no arguing that English verse is basically accentual-syllabic verse, and that its principles apply here as anywhere. In a line like "hug me naked laughing & telling girl friends," it's 100% stress equivalence.

Still, in these English examples, one does notice that sheer prolongation of time plays a role that is unusually significant for English prosody. Consonant clusters also seem piled up more than usual in places to create a touch of quantitative effect. Note how Watts handles "pillars": he gets a "heavy" syllable out of the word's unstressed syllable. In short, I think English poets who experiment with quantitative meter are sometimes doing something a bit unnatural & do force us away from pure use of the stress accent to determine the verse rhythm. Wareh (talk) 20:44, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Brevis in longo

@Ser be etre shi: Thanks for your recent (and previous) edits. I'm pleased you're looking over my shoulder. It looks like we're approaching the problem of brevis in longo a little differently; I trust we can come to a mutually acceptable solution. Disclosure: I'm not a classicist (nor even an amateur linguist, serious or not), and the sources I have to hand are not sufficiently explicit about this fine point so I'm squinting here a bit. Perhaps you can help. My best crack at a sound understanding is: 1) Anceps is distinct from, and should be distinguished from, brevis in longo. 2) Anceps refers to a metrical position that can be realized by a short syllable experienced as a short, or by a long syllable experienced as a long. 3) Brevis in longo is strictly not a kind of metrical position, but rather a method of filling a final long position... with a short syllable that because of the line-end pause is more or less experienced as a long. If this is correct, then it's not correct to mark final "indifferent" longs as anceps (though many sources do). Moreover it cannot be correct to scan meter templates (I mean the meter generally, as opposed to the scansion of a specific line) as possessing brevis in longo, because this is a characteristic of a syllable, not a metrical position. The position is long. The syllable (as in the first line in the Horace example) may be a brevis in longo. It seems to me that the optimal solution is to keep the final positions long (as in the source, which Brogan praises), and include an explanatory note (which I hadn't got to writing yet -- for reasons that by now are obvious). What do you think? Perhaps you've got a source that is sufficiently punctilious and can shed better light? Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 20:37, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Phil wink: Oh, that's interesting! Honestly, I had never given it much thought, and so I liked to write an anceps at the end of lines, just as many sources do. You've convinced me of your view. By the way, I like all the work you've done, particularly adding all those citations.

Also, regarding the first line in the Horace example, what is the reason to treat -rus as brevis in longo? Does Gasparov do that? -rus is a long syllable, and the next line even begins with a consonant (Non eget...), so we can't bring up "synaphy" (i.e. treating a final consonant as beginning a syllable with a word-initial vowel in the next line).--Ser be etre shi (talk) 21:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Ser be etre shi: Thanks. As you can see here (well, barely see -- the scan is weirdly light) Gasparov marks longs and stresses -- the other syllables being short/unstressed by implication. And "-rus" is not marked as long. So I marked it as brevis in longo (rather than plain short) assuming that this was the only reasonable explanation. I guess "typo" could be another explanation! If you can find a superior scansion source, I'm happy to rejigger it -- the fact that Gasparov includes both quantitative and stress scansion is damned convenient, and I definitely want to present both together in the article (and for this specific stanza, since it's kind of a locus classicus); but if it's wrong, we could in a pinch combine scansion sources to provide a more accurate picture. Phil wink (talk) 22:25, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Phil wink: I was able to find a (cough cough, correct) scansion of the line in a congress publication from 1962 (Report, International Musicological Society, volume 8 part 2, published by Bärenreiter, page 67), showing "— —" for the word purus (try your Google Books luck). Do you think it could somehow be incorporated into the text to fix up Gasparov? Sadly I don't know the title of the paper or the author's name...--Ser be etre shi (talk) 07:40, 18 July 2021 (UTC)