[Solan]

Tim, I would say meter is pretty audible in Norwegian, and my uneducated view is that stresses and de-stresses are far stronger in Norwegian than in English. English-speakers often call our language "sing-song".

But that leave me wondering what to do in the cases where stress is very weak.

Jeg er ik<u>ke</u> potet. Jeg er poet. (I am not a potato. I am a poet.)

The and stress on "ikke" is extremely weak compared to the the other stresses. Is it then a weak iamb, or is it a (was spondee the name of weak-weak?)

--

Svein Olav

.. another life

[This message has been edited by Solan (edited August 01, 2001).]

[R. S. Gwynn]

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

I can see that this is a very old thread, but I'll put my two cents in:

Where does Hardy put the stress in "inland"? Could his pronunciation put it on the second (which is metrically more regular)?

"Stonehenge" has hovering stress, but the emphasis is primarily on the first syllable. A true rhyme for it would be something like "bone tinge." I've always thought that Hardy pulled off a marvelous effect here, rhyming a stressed syllable ("-venge") with one that is relatively weaker. This has the effect of weakening the poem's closure, almost like putting a set of ellipses after the final word. In other words, it could go further back than even Stonehenge, this history of violence.

I'm not sure of the geographical location of Stourton Tower. The three places move us progressively further back in time. Are we moving progressively inland too?

[robert mezey]

Carol, I would agree in general that accented
syllables should not be rhymed with unaccented
ones---but one mustn't be too doctrinaire. Such
rhymes have been done beautifully. Some very
fine poets find it permissible, or make it so.
And it is certainly permissible in translation,
where it is important to rhyme if the original is
rhymed---finding a rhyme in English is often very
difficult and an imperfect rhyme is better than
none at all (and better than changing the sense.)
And you must remember that the meter may have
already changed the accent of the word, as in
Hardy's word "outrollings" which must be pronounced
with accents on the first and third syllables (and
the third syllable is a rhyme). The meter alters
the pronunciation of words more than we think.
The example Sam raised is a good one. We pronounce
"inland" with an accent on the first syllable (and
so do the English, I believe), but Hardy makes you
shift a little. You don't say inLAND of course,
but the strict iambic drive of the poem (and to some
extent the quantity of the second syllable) makes us
hear it as an iamb---that is to say, we put the
speech stress on the first syllable but the metrical
accent on the second. Now you may say, how can there
be an iamb where the stress is mostly on the first
syllable? and I'd answer, it happens quite often
("Although they do not talk of it at school--"). I
have never seen it discussed in the prosody books,
but it exists nevertheless. For example, the line
from a Justice poem, "Like storm clouds in a troubled
sky"--clouds has more stress than in but
we still read the line iambically---the ear hears the
slight accent on in and is satisfied. I call
it a kind of inverted iamb, and it's fairly common.
(I've raised the question with several friends who are learned in matters of prosody, Justice for one, Edgar
Bowers and others, and they agreed that there is such
a phenomenon, an "inverted" iamb.

To answer Sam's other question, about Stourton Tower,
here is my note on the poem in my edition of Hardy's
SELECTED POEMS: "Hardy would certainly have heard the
roar of the guns from English battleships in the spring
of 1914: Dorchester is only seven miles north of the
coast. Each of the monuments named in the last stanza
moves progressively farther back in time and space.
Stourton Tower commemorates the great victory of the
Saxon King Alfred over the invading Danes in 879 [CE]
and praises him for the establishment of the monarchy,
the navy, trial by jury, liberty, and other things.
Camelot is sometimes imagined to be the citadel of the
much earlier and legendary King Arthur, who is supposed
to have led the Britons against the Saxons. Stonehenge
is the famous prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain.
It is something of a hyperbole to extend the sound of
the guns to these ancient sacred places---Stonehenge
is some fifty miles away...."

[Nigel Holt]

Robert,

The sound of the guns travelling so far may not be hyperbole. During the major major battles on the Western Front in 1915 and 1916, the sound of the guns could be clearly heard by residents of coastal towns in East Anglia - particularly in Norfolk. The naval guns mentioned tend to be of a calibre, if anything higher than those used on the battlefield. Most English Super Dreadnoughts had 21 inch guns - larger than all but the biggest field artillery.
With the wind in the right direction the sound of naval gunfire would have carried a long way - especially as East Anglia and Dorset share the same flatness of terrain.

Nigel

[robert mezey]

Nigel, thanks for the information on British
naval guns; I stand corrected. And I'll make
the correction in my note to the poem (if the
Hardy book ever goes into a second edition,
which I doubt). And of course it must have
been very quiet (supernaturally so, by our
wretched standards) on Salisbury Plain in 1914,
especially at night.

[peter richards]

'Inland', like 'Stonehenge', is naturally stressed on the second syllable in British English. If your sensitivity to meter is enough to force the natural American stress on the first syllable over onto the second, then I suppose that's a good thing. When making a study of meter in this way though, it's probably worth taking a peek at the OED. (Just as I should Webster's).


Having thought about it, there are variations with 'inland', as in 'Inland Revenue', where the stress is on syllable #1. The use of the word is arguably adjectival in the case of the IR, but it becomes a compound noun phrase as in 'inland waterways', which also stresses the first syllable. Second syllable when used a post-moderator, perhaps? - Make sure it's one of the really big, fat copies of the OED.

Peter

[Clive Watkins]

Peter

I, too, noticed this thread and thought of posting a comment about the UK pronunciation of "inland", which, like you, I sometimes naturally stress on the second syllable in ordinary speech. I have checked this out with several friends here, and we all agree that, in some constructions, it is the second syllable that takes the stress, though none of us felt that stressing the first syllable in such cases was wrong. I am thinking particularly of expressions which state or imply motion - for example, these: "Once you are through the village, the road turns inland…", "Further inland, the country is more rugged…", and so on.

In fact, the full OED shows the stress as falling in all usages only on the first syllable, though it does give alternative pronunciations, one using the schwa and one with a short "a" ("æ"). It is the fuller vowel, rather than the schwa, which my friends and I employ in the constructions referred to above and in which, in addition, we also stress the second syllable. The OED is a great resource, but it is not infallible. Perhaps we should write to the editors!

In the Hardy line, I would naturally stress the second syllable and not regard this as an effect of metre.

Clive Watkins

[A. E. Stallings]

I also would say inLAND if it is being used as an adv., though as an adj., I suppose might stress first syllable. Maybe this is a Southern pronunciation in my case? (And Southern American English can have some similarities to British English.) On the other hand, southerners usually want to stress initial syllables where others wouldn't (umbrella, insurance, etc.). Hmmm.

My husband, who speaks British English, also says inLAND tho. But my dictionary here (not a very good one, admittedly) only has INlend.

[robert mezey]

I did originally check the OED and, as has been
noted, it does have the accent on the first syllable
of inland, and so does my Webster (in all
uses of the word), and so do all my other books.
Maybe the Brit usage is contemporary. (I have a
friend who is my private authority on the Dorset
accent and he says he thinks it is always INland
there.) But it's of no real importance; what does
matter is the metrical phenomenon, the inverted iamb,
that I was trying (and will try again, soon) to
describe and account for.