Jezik in slovstvo

Kodni sistem
Slovenska knjizevnost
Avtorji
Urednistvo <-> bralci

Jezik in slovstvo
Povzetki

Aleksander Bjelcevic

Protestantski silabizem
Protestant Syllabism

Slovenski sinopsis
English synopsis
English summary

Slovenski sinopsis

V péti pesmi pomeni silabizem to, da se besedni naglasi in poudarki v taktu pogosto ne pokrivajo. Silabicnost merimo z enostavno statistiko: koliko naglasenih zlogov je na posameznih zlogovnih polozajih v verzu. Napake zaradi napacnega naglasanja lahko nevtraliziramo s primerjalnimi meritvami: a) med protestantskimi in bolj ritmicnimi katoliskimi pesmimi 16. stoletja, b) med protestantskim verzom in prozo. Izkaze se, da je protestantski verz manj ritmicen od katoliskega in da je ritmicno enak protestantski prozi.

English synopsis

In a song syllabism means that word stress and beat frequently do not coincide. Syllabicity can be measured with a simple count: we need to establish how many stressed syllables are there in individual syllabic positions in a line. Errors due to incorrect stress assignment can be neutralised with comparative analyses of: a) protestant songs and more rhytmic Catholic songs from the 16^th century; b) protestant verse and prose. The results show that the protestant verse is less rhythmic than the Catholic one, but rhythmically the same as protestant prose.

English summary

The protestant verse is syllabic; verses in identical position in a stanza have the same length, but their rhythm need not be iambic, trocheean, amphibrachic, etc. Their only metric property is isosyllabicity. Most frequently, the verse has eight syllables. The melody was probably rhythmic, with stress on the first syllable in a measure. Most melodies have a permanent leading syllable, i.e. they are iambic. Syllabicity thus means that stressed syllables and beats frequently do not coincide: stressed syllables in words, especially polysyllabic, are equally frequent in strong (-) and weak (U) positions. Today some words are stressed differently than in the past, therefore the most reliable proof of syllabilicity is a simple count performed on the commonest protestant metric form, the iambic octosyllabic verse. There are at least two possibilities. 1) To count the number of stressed syllables in each of the eight positions. If the verse is iambic, the even (strong) positions will be frequently stressed, and the weak ones only rarely (Cf. the syllabotonic rhythm in Preseren's poetry and in the 19th century). In protestant songs, all syllables have the same frequency of stresses; instead of a curved graph, the line is straight. 2) Because objections were raised to these statistics, two additional comparitive analyses were carried out: the protestant syllabic verse was compared a) to a verse pattern from approximately the same period (the more rhythmic verse of pre-protestant songs) and to a later syllabotonic verse (the present day folk songs) (Svetina 1997, 1997b); b) to octosyllabic sentences and segments from protestant prose, which naturally do not have verse rhythm (Zupancic 1999). The results of both tests confirmed syllabicity. The protestant octosyllabic verse is less rhythmic than protestant devout songs (these come half-way close to the rhythm of present-day folk poetry) or not rhythmic at all. Its rhythm is the same as that of protestant prose. Such a comparative analysis neutralises errors that may have resulted from incorrect stress- assignment in protestant texts. Both prose and verse were stressed in the same manner, and the results show no difference between the two (while in the 19th century, the difference is very obvious). The only exception is rhyme. In rhymes, stressed and unstressed syllables follow the metric pattern more closely than in the rest of the verse (although less than in the 18th and especially 19th century): according to the melodic pattern, the octosyllabic verse should have the masculine rhyme, and it is indeed much more frequent than the feminine one.