Sorry for using technical jargon. I do not
mean "feet" in the sense that the word has in theories of verse. In modern
phonology a "foot" is a string of syllables including exactly one that carries
stress. It applies to speech in general, not just to the rhythm of poetry;
stress assignment is viewed as an algorithm of foot construction. It is more or
less agreed (though different analyses differ in matters of fine detail) that
the preferred foot shape in Latin was the so-called moraic trochee (it should
not be confused with the poetic notion of "trochee"), that is a foot of the
shape ('LL) or ('H), where L is a light syllable and H is a heavy syllable. One
of the ways in which the Latin stress rule can be expressed is this: mark the
last syllable as extrametrical and then try to construct a well-formed trochee
at the right edge of the word. If neither ('LL) nor ('H) can be erected there,
the next best thing is ('HL). Many specialists prefer to analyse it as ('H)L,
allowing the stress rule to skip a single light syllable that cannot be
parsed.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 9:37 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] the rhythm and stress in Latin
>Latin avoids stress domains ("metrical feet") with a
light stressed
syllable at the end.
Can you expand and clarify
please? I am puzzled by your wording. Do you
mean
Latin avoids placing light stressed syllables in the last position of
a
metrical foot? If so, you can quickly be proved wrong by almost any
line of
hexameter verse, or almost every pentameter of Ovid - so I suspect I
have
misunderstood you.
We must also remember that the only native
verse structure in Latin is
Saturnian verse, which is stress timed, not
syllable timed. All the verse
structures that rely on oppositions of
heavy and light syllables are
borrowed directly from
Greek.
Peter