ADONIUS: SLAVONIC, GERMAN AND SOME OTHER REFLEXES

The research presented in the article focuses on the rhythmical model formed by two (as a rule) independent phonetic words the total length of which consists of five syllables; syntactically it is mainly a part of an utterance (normative phrase), as for verse division, most frequently it forms the pre- or post-caesura part of a line, looking like _UU_U. Such a phenomenological description is a forced necessity, because the object has no generally accepted definition. It may be defined as either a foot of a logaoed (adonius) or a truncated dactyl. In spite of the absence of a generally accepted name, the object itself is classified by verse scholars with high precision. Using the term offered by M. M. Kenigsberg, we suggest ranging it as a verseme (stycheme), i.e. primary verseforming unit of limited lexical and syntactic content. In the present article, a series of suppositions is made concerning a) natural (not ancient) origin of the given verseme in the Lithuanian, Polish, possibly Ukrainian versification space, possible borrowing from those mentioned above by the new German and Russian traditions; b) interaction of the epic and lyrical semantic aureoles of the verseme in the geographically adjacent space of the mentioned versification cultures.