Weak Position (poetry) - Syllables in Weak Position

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:

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).