Generative metrics


Generative metrics is the collective term for three distinct theories of verse structure advanced between 1966 and 1977. Inspired largely by the example of Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures and Chomsky and Morris Halle's The Sound Pattern of English, these theories aim principally at the formulation of explicit linguistic rules that will generate all possible well-formed instances of a given meter and exclude any that are not well-formed. T.V.F. Brogan notes that of the three theories, "ll three have undergone major revision, so that each exists in two versions, the revised version being preferable to the original in every case."

Halle–Keyser

The earliest theory of generative metrics is that put forth by Morris Halle and Samuel Jay Keyser — first in 1966 with respect to Chaucer's iambic pentameter, and in its full and revised form in 1971's English Stress: Its Forms, Its Growth, and Its Role in Verse. Halle and Keyser conceive of the iambic pentameter line as a series of 10 Weak and Strong positions:
W S W S W S W S W S
but to accommodate acephalous lines, and feminine and triple endings, use this full formulation:
S W S W S W S W S
where the first Weak position is optional, and the final 2 positions are also optional. They then define their signal concept, the Stress Maximum, as a stressed syllable "located between two unstressed syllables in the same syntactic constituent within a line of verse". Finally, the fit between syllables and the positions they occupy are evaluated by these 2 hierarchical sets of correspondence rules:
A position corresponds to either
AND

Rules are evaluated in order. If rules -1 or -1 or -2 are broken, this indicates increasing complexity of the line. But if -2 or -3 are broken, the line is unmetrical.
An example of Halle and Keyser's scansion is:
/ / / M /
many bards the ses of time!
W S W S W S W S W S
Stresses are indicated by a slash "/" and Stress Maxima by "M". A single underline indicates a violation of -1; a double underline indicates a violation of -1 & 2. In addition, the Stress Maximum "lap", since it occurs on a W position, violating -3, should get a third underline, rendering the line unmetrical.
Joseph C. Beaver, Dudley L. Hascall, and others have attempted to modify or extend the theory.

Criticism

The Halle–Keyser system has been criticized because it can identify passages of prose as iambic pentameter.
Later generative metrists pointed out that poets have often treated non-compound words of more than one syllable differently from monosyllables and compounds of monosyllables. Any normally weak syllable may be stressed as a variation if it is a monosyllable, but not if it is part of a polysyllable except at the beginning of a line or a phrase. Thus Shakespeare wrote:
× × / / × / × / × /
For the four winds blow in from every coast
but wrote no lines of the form of:
× × / / × / × / × /
As gazelles leap a never-resting brook
The stress patterns are the same, and in particular, the normally weak third syllable is stressed in both lines; the difference is that in Shakespeare's line the stressed third syllable is a one-syllable word, "four", whereas in the un-Shakespearean line it is part of a two-syllable word, "gazelles". Pope followed such a rule strictly, Shakespeare fairly strictly, Milton much less, and Donne not at all—which may be why Ben Jonson said Donne deserved hanging for "not keeping of accent".
Derek Attridge has pointed out the limits of the generative approach; it has “not brought us any closer to understanding why particular metrical forms are common in English, why certain variations interrupt the metre and others do not, or why metre functions so powerfully as a literary device.” Generative metrists also fail to recognize that a normally weak syllable in a strong position will be pronounced differently, i.e. “promoted” and so no longer "weak."

Magnuson–Ryder

A Distinctive Feature Analysis of verse was advanced by Karl Magnuson and Frank Ryder in 1970 and revised in 1971, based on their earlier work on German verse, and ultimately deriving from phonological distinctive feature principles of the Prague School. They similarly propose that iambic pentameter consists of a 10-position line of Odd and Even slots:
O E O E O E O E O E
However, in other meters these slots retain their identities of odd = "not metrically prominent" and even = "metrically prominent", so that trochaic tetrameter has the structure:
E O E O E O E O
They then label each syllable in the verse line, according to the presence or absence of 4 linguistic features: Word Onset, Weak, Strong, Pre-Strong. Each type of position has an "expected" set of values for these features:
FeatureOddEven
Word Onset -+
Weak +-
Strong -+
Pre-Strong +-

Thus:
O E O E O E O E O E
WO + - + + + - - + + +
WK - + + - - - + - + +
ST + - - + + + - + - -
PS - - - - + - - - - -
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
The expected values are then compared to the actual values of the verse line. "Since the expectation matrix can never be fulfilled completely, it follows that one must assume all poetry to be unmetrical in some degree, and the task of prosody is to find the constraints upon the conditions under which a feature may occur in a nonaffirming relation to the matrix. These constraints are the Base Rules."
Their revised theory claims to generate the vast majority of canonical English iambic pentameter using only 2 features — Strong and Pre-strong — and only 2 Base Rules constraining neighboring syllables in E O slots:
with the limitation that these Base Rules do not apply across line-juncture or major syntactic boundary.

Criticism

T.V.F. Brogan says of the theory, "It is fair to say that so far their approach has been considered unfruitful by most metrists." However, Derek Attridge considers that David Chisholm's modification of Magnuson–Ryder — along with Kiparsky's theory — "capture the details of English metrical practice more accurately than any of their predecessors".

Kiparsky

's theory, introduced in 1975 and radically revised in 1977, contrasts decisively with previous generative theories on certain key points. Though retaining the now-familiar 10-position line, he reintroduces metrical feet by "bracketing" Weak and Strong positions:

Furthermore, Kiparsky's account "is based on a specific theory of English stress elaborated by Liberman and Prince as a counter-proposal to Chomsky and Halle's Sound Pattern of English." Conversely, he considers the syllables in a verse line to have a complex hierarchical structure — analogous to a core proposition in Chomsky's transformational grammar — as opposed to the previous theories which gave syllables a strictly linear treatment.
Once the verse text has been parsed and its syllables assigned "W" and "S" labels and hierarchical relationships, it can be compared with the metrical structure of the line. "Labeling mismatches" may render the line more complex or unmetrical: different rules reflect different poets' practice. " 'Bracketing' mismatches occur when the two patterns of W and S agree but the brackets to each pattern are out of sync — as with trochaic words in an iambic line." The most essential test of metricality is "that the more closely an S-syllable in W-position is bound to the syllable that precedes it, the more metrically disruptive it is."

Criticism

Peter L. Groves has objected that "ccording to Kiparsky, a line will be unmetrical for the vast majority of English poets if it contains an S-syllable in W-position immediately preceded by a W-syllable which it commands; thus an innocuous line like is ruled categorically unmetrical:"
W S
Give renew'd fire to our extincted Spirits
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