> >> lexical stress (dictionary syllable-stress on words of more than one
> >> syllable)
> >> phrasal stress (common customs of stressing nouns more than articles,
> >> etc.)
> >> performative stress (emphasis by an individual person or situation)
> >
> > I don't get this. Seems over-complicated. What's wrong with the
> > traditional distinction between speech-stress and metrical stress
> > (ictus),
> > with rhythm emerging from the interaction between the two?
>
> These are three ways of arriving at speech-stress itself. I have found
> it helpful when teaching, to explain that the scansion of some lines is
> more subjective than of others. The last kind of stress can always be
> affected by the ictus, whereas the first never can.
Right, got it now, Annie. I think.
But ... Dictionary stress would reflect the way that it's simply the case
that words have definite stress patterns -- so "account" has to be X / and
"coming" / X. Whether or not this would be the way these figure in metre
would be a matter of the context. I can imagine a situation where "account
coming" would scan X / X X since while both the second syllable of "account"
and the first of "coming" are stressed, the second syllable of "account" is
more stressed than the first syllable of "coming". (To my ear, at least.)
But then I'm deeply wedded to the idea of contrastive rather than absolute
stress, and I should construct a fuller example, but my brain's not up to it
at the moment.
(I found "A Carol for Caroline", but the abemuse.com link seems to be
busted -- I had to peel it out of the google cache. First incredibly glib
reaction is that I'm one of those who read amphibrachs as anapests. Mind
you, I'm still bouncing backwards and forwards across the first line, "I
dreamed of a poet who gave me a whale," which I read as a mix of iambic and
anapestic -- X / X X / X / X X /. Then I feel a terrible pull to end the
second line, "sea-weeded shale" which would *really* fix an anapestic
pattern, just what you don't want. <g>)
Robin
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