Syllables in Weak Position
A broader metrical sense of "weak position" can arise in any language, either from a formal poetic meter (such as iambic pentameter or the Latin hendecasyllable) or from the use of parallel structure in prose for rhetorical effect. The prevailing rhythm of the poem or speech leads the listener (or reader) to expect a certain pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The consequences of violating that expectation may be illustrated with a line from John Milton's Paradise Lost:
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- Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, and shades of death
Here rocks, lakes, and bogs are all stressed syllables in weak positions, resulting in a dramatically slow and dolorous line among the surrounding blank verse. (This reading of one of Milton's most famous lines is familiar but not uncontested; see Bridges' analysis of Paradise Lost.) In the linguistics literature, this usage of "weak position" originated in Halle and Keyser (1966).
Read more about this topic: Weak Position (poetry)
Famous quotes containing the words syllables, weak and/or position:
“This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie....”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It’s absolutely unavoidable. A journalist is someone who looks at the world and the way it works, someone who takes a close look at things every day and reports what she sees, someone who represents the world, the event, for others. She cannot do her work without judging what she sees.”
—Marguerite Duras (b. 1914)