Dear friends,

the following is from Chapter 15 of Charles Duroiselle's Grammar. I
shall include my own comments for discussion. I do not claim any
expertise in this area, but would like to explore more as part of my
study of Pali. If you like to understand prosody in general, please
read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody

I will try to make this a regular series, maybe on a weekly basis,
covering the entire chapter in as much details as I can gather, within
the bounds of my understanding of course.

I hope the symbols used below: macron (¯) and breve (˘) show up just
fine for everyone, including me.

Without further ado,

626. Prosody is that part of Grammar which treats of the laws of
versification.

* A gaathaa in Paali poetry, is a stanza.
* A paada is the fourth part of a stanza, called also a quarter verse.
* A va.n.na is a syllable in a paada.
* A short syllable is termed lahu.
* A long syllable is called garu.
* A foot is termed ga.na.

<YP> As we shall see below, in spoken Pali, syllables are either short
or long. I guess this is true in speech for most languages, it can
become technically cumbersome if there are syllables of various
lengths other than simply short and long.

<YP> Terminology: lahu = short syllable, garu = long syllable, ga.na =
foot. A foot is made up of two or more syllables.

<YP> More definitions: gaathaa = stanza, paada = last quarter portion
of a stanza, va.n.na = a syllable in a paada.

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627. The mark ¯ represents a short syallable, and the mark ˘ a long
syllable. A foot containing two long syllables is termed gaa, that is,
ga+ga, the initial syllable ga of the word garu being used to
represent a long syllable. A foot of two short syllables is termed
laa, that is la+la, the initial syllable of the word lahu being
employed to represent a short syllable.

<YP> The symbol used to mark a short syllable is a macron: ¯

<YP> The symbol used to mark a long syllable is a breve: ˘

<YP> New definitions: gaa = a foot containing two long syllables, laa
= a foot containing two short syllables.

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628. The following are the four varieties of a dis-syllabic foot.

Syllables Paali English
˘ ˘ la la or laa Pyrrhic
¯ ¯ ga ga or gaa Spondee
˘ ¯ la ga Lambus
¯ ˘ ga la Trochee

<YP> There are four possible combinations for a two-syllable foot:
long-long, short-short, long-short, and short-long.


metta,
Yong Peng.