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Introduction
This dissertation aims at making insights
into Middle English metrical structure from
a perspective of metrical and phonological
constrains on it.
The
dissertation
is organized in the following
five
chapters.
Chapter
one begins
with a discussion of
Middle
English
Metrical Well-formedness Constraints.
They
consist
of those constraints on rhyme
structure,
alliterative
structure and rhythm
structure.
The Constraints
on rhyme and alliterative
structures,
which
take care of rhyme and
alliteration
will
first be discussed. they
allow
for occasional
violations. Under what
conditions
they
are incurred constitutes
our main
concern
here.
Chapter
two argues
about a third constraint
- rhythm
structure
Constraint - that imposes
on the
rhythm
struture of verse lines one-
to -
one correspondence
between metrical
position
and linguistic
stress ( Positional
Constraint
). The
rhythm structure Constraint
contains
another
requirement : Labeling match,
i.e.,
metrical
W / S should correspondent
to linguistic
W / S
and Bracketing match,i.e.,
metrical
WS should
correspond to lingistic
structure
WS. The
correspondence between
two levels
readily
deviate, however. I discuss
under
what
conditions deviations of this
kind
emerge.
There is another subconstraint
at work
here
- Foot / Word Alignment Constraint
whereby
both
edges of each foot are aligned
with
those
of lexical words
Chapter
three
focuses on middle English
word
stress.
it will be demonstrated that
the tree
theory
takes good care of word stress
and does
a better
job than other theories
in that
it can
go a long way without cycles
and enables
us to
envisage metrical structure
in direct
relation
to linguistic stress.
Chapter
four
presents a discussion concerning
the issue
of how
phonological stimuli respond
to syllable
structure,
that is, how differently
consonantal
processes
behave according to
which
position
a constituent occupies, word
- peripheral
Onset
/ Coda position or word
- internal
Onset
/ Coda position. The discussion
here
leads
us to conclude that we have to
take
into
account not only hierarchical but
linear
structures
when it comes to dealing
with
phonological
processes in a satisfactory
way.
The
final
chapter is devoted to a detailed
phonological
analysis
of metrical deviations.
it is
assumed
here that such deviations reflect
or recapitulate
ongoing
or finished phonological
processes.
Thus
Nucleus deviations emerge
as vowel
alternations,
while Coda / Onset
deviations
emerge
as consonantal alternations.Much
space
is spent
discussing vocalic vertical
/ horizontal
processes,
durational processes
and consonantal
processes.
Summary
and Conclusions
conclude this dissertation. |
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