English Meter

[vir litterarum]

I was just wondering whether anyone could explain to me why poets who compose in the English language, with a few exceptions, refuse to use meters based on syllable-length. I am aware that even poems written in Old English like Beowulf utilized a stress-based metrical scheme, but Latin poetry was originally stress-based too, e.g. the Saturnian meter, but then became length-based through the influence of Greek. Is there some essential difference between the languages of which I am not aware that would prevent this from occurring in English? The transition to length-based meters attained universal predominance in Latin poetry; why can it not even gain a foothold in English verse?

[Damoetas]

Perhaps someone else can give a more detailed answer, but I think the essence of it is really very simple: English vowels don't have quantity apart from stress. Even though the earlier Latin meters were stress-based, their language at least had the phonemic structure that would make either metrical scheme possible. (Also, I think there is some scholarly controversy about what the Saturnian meter really was; it might not be as clear-cut as you say.) But anyway, leaving that aside, the main reason has to do with the phonology of English. Stress in English is a bundle of several phonetic features: 1) higher pitch, 2) greater force and loudness, and 3) length. Vowels that are not stressed are reduced to schwa (or something similar -- I'm oversimplifying). What we call "long" and "short" vowels in English (e.g. a as in "late" vs. a as in "cat") are really separate vowel phonemes, distinguished not by length but by quality. (Although they do have a historical connection, which is where the terminology comes from.) So anyway, since vowel length in English is almost entirely a subset of stress, it seems that stress is really the only metrical scheme possible.

For samples of what modern languages with contrastive vowel length sound like, you can listen to recordings of Finnish or (to a lesser extent) Serbo-Croat (and there are other languages as well, I'm just not thinking of them right now). Or check out the Latin read by the Finnish speakers at Nuntii Latini -- I think their pronunciation of vowel length is probably very accurate.

EDIT: PS: I haven't read much about Old English, to see if it's vowel quantity system was similar to Greek and Latin. If it was, it has completely changed somewhere in the intervening centuries -- perhaps someone else knows exactly when. (post-Norman conquest?)

EDIT: PPS: One other factor that determines vowel length in English is whether or not the following consonant is voiced. Vowels are pronounced longer before voiced consonants (b, d, g, z, v, nasals) than voiceless ones (p, t, k, s, f, etc). So, for instance, the "short a" in "bag" is actually longer than the "long a" in "bake." You can check it out by recording yourself (or some other unsuspecting person) saying the words, and then looking at the wave form on a sound editing program.

[vir litterarum]

Even though the earlier Latin meters were stress-based, their language at least had the phonemic structure that would make either metrical scheme possible. (

So are you arguing that the stress accent of Latin is qualitatively different from that of English? I disagree that English accent affects syllable length; I think it takes the same amount of time to pronounce an accented and unaccented short or long syllable, unless one artificially emphasizes the accent by prolonging the length of pronunciation. I would definitely agree that the distinctions between a long and short syllable may be more complex in English than in Latin, but I still think they exist: it still takes longer to pronounce "breed than bred", and two consecutive consonants still increase the length of time it takes to pronounce a syllable with a short vowel.

So, for instance, the "short a" in "bag" is actually longer than the "long a" in "bake."

You're right, but both are still in a simplified system "long." If, for example, in either Latin or Greek, you compare the length of time it takes to pronounce a syllable that is only long by position and one that is both long by position and nature, e.g. the -is in "canis rabidus" and the first -is in "puellis bellis", the latter is going to take slightly longer to pronounce, but both, because the system has been simplified, are just considered long.

[Essorant]

it still takes longer to pronounce "breed than bred"

I think you are incorrect about this. Vowel length is dependant on phonetic enviroment in Modern English. Therefore any/every vowel in an enviroment that makes a vowel long is long and any in an enviroment that makes it short is short. Vowel sounds at the end of a word are generally long: claw, glow, see, sigh, etc. Add a d and they all become a little less long: clawed, glowed, seed, side. Add a t and they all become short: clot, gloat, seat, sight.

I think the answer to the question is that syllable-length just doesn't "stick out" enough in English to have importance, at least not anymore. Try writing some poetic verse that uses syllable-length instead and see if anyone notices. They probably won't. But they surely notice the stresses of a poem with iambic meter, when it is well done. That is because stresses "stick out" enough in English to make a great difference.

[vir litterarum]

I think the answer to the question is that syllable-length just doesn't "stick out" enough in English to have importance, at least not anymore.

I still don't see what would have made syllable-length any more prominent in Latin than it is English when both have a stress accent. I agree that phonetic environment does affect a syllable's length, but those are the types of small differences that inevitably must exist in a system that only distinguishes between long and short quantities: not every long and short is equal, but, when a poem is recited orally, the poet can account for such minuscule differences while performing.

I think the only reason that syllable-length does not seem to "stick out" in English is because of our current paradigm: if we were paying attention primarily to syllable length and not accent, then this would become the most prominent determinant of prosody just as it did for the Romans, who were able to switch from accentual to syllabic poetry. It just seems to me to be a matter of perspective.

The only famous poet of whom I know who based his prosody on syllable-length was Robert Bridges, who used dactylic hexameter for his translation of the sixth book of the Aeneid.

[annis]

why can it not even gain a foothold in English verse?

It's not contrastive in English, whereas in Greek and Latin vowel length could be the sole difference between two otherwise identical words. Without training, a native English speaker will have no reason to attend to vowel length. To speak Latin correctly even in prose required attention to that detail. Why would one develop a system of verse that requires people to attend to contrasts they won't even consider a contrast without training?

[Jeff Tirey]

Hi Will - it's good to see you!

Jeff

[Damoetas]

So are you arguing that the stress accent of Latin is qualitatively different from that of English?

Just expand a little bit more on what others have already said:

It's not so much that the stress accent of Latin was qualitatively different from that of English (although it may have been). The main point is that vowel length in Latin was fundamentally different from what we call length in English. In Latin, a long vowel was always pronounced twice as long as the corresponding short vowel, regardless of the position in the word or whether it was stressed or not. That was the only difference in the sound of the two vowels.

As you can see, the relationship between the "long" and "short" vowels in English is nothing like this. It is simply a historical accident that we even use the terms "long" and "short" for something that is a fundamentally different phenomenon. The example that you mentioned, "breed" and "bred," does not involve long and short versions of the same vowel. They are two different vowels (which just happen to be spelled the same). As described phonetically, "breed" contains a "high unrounded front vowel," whereas "bred" contains a "mid unrounded front vowel with lax articulation" -- i.e., not only is the front part of tongue lower in the mouth, but there is also slightly less tension in the throat muscles; you can see this x-ray videos of people pronouncing sounds. The same holds true for other vowels that we call long and short versions of each other, but they are really not. In fact, most English vowels do come in pairs of "tense" and "lax," but often these don't match up with what we call long and short. E.g. "oo" as in "boot" and "u" as in "put" (at least in American English; the pairs are different in other varieties of English). In all these cases, the actual period of time that it takes to articulate the vowel is completely incidental to the distinction in sound; length, as I mentioned before, correlates almost entirely with 1) stress, and 2) whether the following consonant is voiced or voiceless.

The upshot of all this is, in Latin, vowel length (and likewise syllable length) must have had much much greater acoustic prominence than did stress. Whatever Latin stress sounded like, it must have been comparatively weak in the classical period; and that is why it was natural for them to base their meters on quantity instead of stress. Since the phonology of English is completely different in all respects, quantity-based meters simply don't work for us.

[modus.irrealis]

It's not so much that the stress accent of Latin was qualitatively different from that of English (although it may have been). The main point is that vowel length in Latin was fundamentally different from what we call length in English. In Latin, a long vowel was always pronounced twice as long as the corresponding short vowel, regardless of the position in the word or whether it was stressed or not. That was the only difference in the sound of the two vowels.

It doesn't effect your point but there are many (Allen in Vox Latina e.g.) who reconstruct differences in quality between the long and short versions of all vowels but a, with the short vowels being more open and the long vowels more close.

Another difference that may or may not be connected is that English does not have geminate consonants (except across morpheme boundaries). It seems to me that languages where quantitative verse is well-established do, and I can't find any counterexamples. This might be related to the issue of syllables that are long by position (which I can't imagine comes down to actual length -- how can et take longer to say than stre?). Since both have to do with syllabification, they might be related, and I do know that I have as much problems with double consonants as I do quantitative verse.

[Damoetas]

It doesn't effect your point but there are many (Allen in Vox Latina e.g.) who reconstruct differences in quality between the long and short versions of all vowels but a, with the short vowels being more open and the long vowels more close.

Yes, I was oversimplifying a bit, in order to keep from obscuring the main point....

Another difference that may or may not be connected is that English does not have geminate consonants (except across morpheme boundaries). It seems to me that languages where quantitative verse is well-established do, and I can't find any counterexamples. This might be related to the issue of syllables that are long by position (which I can't imagine comes down to actual length -- how can et take longer to say than stre?). Since both have to do with syllabification, they might be related, and I do know that I have as much problems with double consonants as I do quantitative verse.

I think you're right about this: geminate consonants do contribute a lot to the overall rhythm of a language.... It reminds me of the time I met a Finnish guy named Jukka Pekka; and the way he pronounced his name, without even any effort to be rhythmical, it automatically sounded like two trochees! The syllables with the double-k's were literally twice as long as the other syllables.

[vir litterarum]

Whatever Latin stress sounded like, it must have been comparatively weak in the classical period; and that is why it was natural for them to base their meters on quantity instead of stress

So are you implying that the stress accent was originally more pronounced when Latin verse such as the Saturnian was stress-based but gradually became weaker with the introduction of Greek meters?

[Damoetas]

So are you implying that the stress accent was originally more pronounced when Latin verse such as the Saturnian was stress-based but gradually became weaker with the introduction of Greek meters?

Oh - no, I didn't mean "the classical period" as opposed to "the earlier period" (when the Saturnian was in use). I meant it in distinction to Late Latin and early Romance, when vowels lost their contrastive length, came to have more qualitative differences, and stress seems to have become stronger. I'm not sure what the current thinking is on how the precise nature of stress may have changed over time (it's been a while since I read about this). I know it's discussed in Herman, Jòzsef. Vulgar Latin. Pennsylvania State, 2000. (Originally Le latin vulgaire. Paris, 1967.) Also in Palmer, L. R. The Latin Language. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. (Originally London : Faber and Faber, 1954.) But there may be newer and better accounts since then....

[vir litterarum]

Ah, gotcha. There probably isn't a good answer to this question. I know that there is still no clear scholarly consensus on how Plautus' meters work:

"It is probable (though not certain and still debated) that pre-literary Latin had a meter based on word accent and called 'Saturnian'.... Great differences of opinion prevail among modern scholars on the question how Latin verse in general, and Plautus in particular, compromised between an apparently strong word accent and verse ictus. It is possible that in some cases the word accent in Plautus' day fell on a different syllable from that determined in later Latin by the quantity of the penult. It is also true that in any language the general stress of a sentence may cause a shift in the normal word accent. It is not easy, however, to show how such shifts of normal accent in ordinary speech can account not only for many cases in Plautine meter in which the verse ictus is different from the word accent but also for the instances in which the verse ictus may fall on different syllables of the same word in different verses." Mason Hammond, 1997.

This idea that the Romans were somehow able to undergo a complete prosodic paradigm shift after already possessing an established tradition of verse based on stress accent fascinates me, and, although I agree that linguistically it is much more difficult to determine syllable length in English than in Latin, it seems to me that syllabic verse in Latin was an artificial imposition on the natural rhythm of the Latin language and that such an imposition, although it would be much more difficult to effect in English owing to the linguistic complications you have cited, could still be possible. I think that a syllabic dactylic hexameter would have had the same aural effect on a Latin speaker who had grown up listening to Saturnian verse that one of Bridges' hexameters has on an English speaker who has grown up listening to nothing but stress based iambic pentameters.

[Damoetas]

Yes, it is clearly a difficult question; I would also like to read more about this (if I ever get time!) Perhaps we've taken this discussion about as far as it can go, without injecting some more outside data.... But I do still have reservations about a few of the ways you've characterized things:

This idea that the Romans were somehow able to undergo a complete prosodic paradigm shift after already possessing an established tradition of verse based on stress accent...

I think this might be overstating how established the tradition of stress accent was, especially given all the scholarly uncertainties and lack of data (as mentioned even in the Hammond quote).

although I agree that linguistically it is much more difficult to determine syllable length in English than in Latin...

I'm not sure that you're recognizing the extent to which vowel length in Latin was a fundamentally different phenomenon than in English. It's not just a matter of degree. It's the fact that every Latin vowel carried a phonemic feature [+/- long], and that each long vowel had to be pronounced with its full length; otherwise the meaning of the word could change. Likewise, as modus.irrealis pointed out, double consonants in Latin were phonemic. (And you can listen to Italian or Finnish to hear how marked this difference is.) So, for those reasons, we should take full account of the fact that the long/short syllable distinction was very prominent acoustically. And this is true quite apart from what the stress sounded like.

...it seems to me that syllabic verse in Latin was an artificial imposition on the natural rhythm of the Latin language...

I know this is a position that some scholars have taken.... I'm not sure what the current consensus on the matter is. But for the reasons mentioned above, I do think that, if it was an imposition, it was one that the natural rhythm of the language made possible. I dare say that if you tried to write to write quantitative verse for English, no one would even recognize it as verse! (But what are these hexameters by Bridges that you mention? Were they based on stress or quantity, and if the latter, how did he define quantity?)

[vir litterarum]

The title of the work by Bridges in which he provides a translation of selections from the Aeneid into syllabic hexameters isIbant Obscuri: an Experiment in the Classical Hexameter

Here are two lines from his translation of book 6:

They wer' amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscure
Walking forth i'the void and vasty dominyon of Ades.

I do not know, however, what criteria he was using to distinguish long from short syllables.

[Caespar]

Although I have little to add to this discussion as such, some poets, like Dylan Thomas, certainly did not generally use stress-based meters. In fact I read an anecdote in one of his biographies that when he was asked to record some of his own poems, he did splendidly, but when asked to read a poem of another poet, whose name presently escapes me, but which was based on a stress-based meter, he utterly failed to read it properly, even after several attempts. Thomas tended to stress nouns, and indeed use the length of words to establish his meter. His poems must be read out loud to 'really hear' them. There may be much more of this Welsh poetry, if that is considered English for your purposes.