RHYTHM AND PARTS OF SPEECH: THE RUSSIAN, GERMAN AND ENGLISH IAMBIC TETRAMETER

Studying the interaction between the parts of speech forming a line and the line’s rhythm shows the extent to which the choice of parts of speech in a line is determined by its meter and rhythm. The most morphologically and syntactically clichéd iambic lines are those where the omission of metrical stress causes a succession of three unstressed syllables. This article shows how these long unstressed intervals are filled in Russian and German, augmented by comparative data on English from the work of other scholars. Analysis of Brodsky’s iambic tetrameter supplements the data on the rhythm and morphology in Russian verse and supports the motion of Gasparov and Skulacheva that long unstressed intervals in Russian verse are occupied by the beginnings and ends of polysyllabic words. This does not depend on the particular stylistic traits of the author but is determined by the rhythms and morphology of the Russian language. German verse uses an additional strategy, described earlier by T. V.Skulacheva for English: it places syntactic constructions with unstressed auxiliary words within the unstressed interval. In 2/3 of the instances German employs this syntactic strategy, and in 1/3 it uses the ends and beginnings of polysyllabic words, as in Russian.