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Kaluza's Law
Kaluza's law proposes a phonological constraint on the metre of the Old English poem ''Beowulf''. It takes its name from Max Kaluza, who made an influential observation on the metrical characteristics of unstressed syllables in ''Beowulf''. His insight was developed further in particular by Alan Bliss and R. D. Fulk. The name 'Kaluza's law' itself appears to have been bestowed by Fulk. The significance of Kaluza's observations for the dating of ''Beowulf'' has been extensively debated. The law Like other Old Germanic languages alliterative verse, the Old English poetic metre of ''Beowulf'' exhibits the phenomenon of resolution, whereby, under certain conditions, two syllables count as one for metrical purposes. These conditions are: # The first of the two syllables must be stressed and the second unstressed. # The vowel (or diphthong) of the stressed syllable must be short. # The stressed syllable must be followed by only one consonant... # ... and then by an unstressed vowel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but may now relate to any linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The building blocks of signs are specifications for movement, location, and handshape. At first, a separate terminology was used for the study of sign phonology ('chereme' instead of 'phoneme', etc.), but the concepts are now considered to apply universally to all human languages. Terminology The word 'phonology' (as in 'phonology of English') can refer either to the field of study or to the phonological system of a given language. This is one of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel Length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in: Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Kannada, Malayalam, Japanese, Latin, Old English, Scottish Gaelic, and Vietnamese. While vowel length alone does not change word meaning in most dialects of English, it is said to do so in a few dialects, such as Australian English, Lunenburg English, New Zealand English, and South African English. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, unlike in other varieties of Chinese. Many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length does not change meaning, and the length of a vowel is conditioned by other factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it, for instance whether the vowel is followed by a voiced or a voiceless conso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sound Laws
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic change) or a more general change to the speech sounds that exist (phonological change), such as the merger of two sounds or the creation of a new sound. A sound change can eliminate the affected sound, or a new sound can be added. Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned if the change occurs in only some sound environments, and not others. The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, " alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system (for example, the ''-s'' in the English plural can be pronounced differently depending on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Neidorf
Leonard Neidorf (born ) is an American philologist who is Professor of English at Nanjing University. Neidorf specializes in the study of Old English and Middle English literature, and is a known authority on '' Beowulf''. Biography Raised in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, Neidorf graduated from Eastern Regional High School in 2006. He gained a BA, summa cum laude, in English from New York University in 2010, and a PhD in English from Harvard University in 2014. Upon gaining his PhD, Neidorf became a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows (2014-2016). Admittance to the Harvard Society of Fellows is considered one of the greatest academic achievements possible in the United States. Since 2016, Neidorf has been Professor of English at Nanjing University. Research Leonard Neidorf specializes in the study of Old English and Middle English literature. He is known as an authority on Beowulf. Neidorf is the author of ''The Art and Thought of the Beowulf Poet'' (2022) and ''The Tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poetic Formulae
Oral-formulaic composition is a theory that originated in the scholarly study of epic poetry and developed in the second quarter of the twentieth century. It seeks to explain two related issues: # the process by which oral poets improvise poetry # the reasons for orally improvised poetry (or written poetry deriving from traditions of oral improvisation) having the characteristics that it does The key idea of the theory is that poets have a store of formulae (a formula being 'an expression that is regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express a particular essential idea') and that by linking the formulae in conventionalised ways, poets can rapidly compose verse. Antoine Meillet expressed the idea in 1923, thus: In the hands of Meillet's student Milman Parry (1902-1935), and subsequently the latter's student Albert Lord (1912-1991), the approach transformed the study of ancient and medieval poetry and of oral poetry generally. The main exponent and developer of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neophilologus
''Neophilologus: An International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature'', is an ongoing peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of modern and mediaeval languages and literature, including general linguistics, literary theory and comparative literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study .... The journal started in 1915 and is now published by Springer Science+Business Media BV. The journal publishes articles in five languages: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. References External links Homepage at Springer Springer Science+Business Media academic journals Publications established in 1915 Multilingual journals Linguistics journals Quarterly journals {{ling-journal-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northumbrian Old English
Northumbrian was a dialect of Old English spoken in the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria. Together with Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English devised and employed by modern scholars. The dialect was spoken from the Humber, now within England, to the Firth of Forth, now within Scotland. In the Danelaw after the Viking invasions, Northumbrian may have been influenced by the Norse language. The earliest surviving Old English texts were written in Northumbrian: these are Caedmon's Hymn (7th century) and Bede's Death Song (8th century). Other works, including the bulk of Caedmon's poetry, have been lost. Other examples of this dialect are the Runes on the Ruthwell Cross from the ''Dream of the Rood''. Also in Northumbrian are the 9th-century Leiden Riddle and the mid-10th-century gloss of the Lindisfarne Gospels. The Viking invasion forced a division of the dialect into two distinct subdialects. South of the River Tees, southern N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercian Dialect
Mercian was a dialect spoken in the Anglian kingdom of Mercia (roughly speaking the Midlands of England, an area in which four kingdoms had been united under one monarchy). Together with Northumbrian, it was one of the two Anglian dialects. The other two dialects of Old English were Kentish and West Saxon. Each of those dialects was associated with an independent kingdom on the island. Of these, all of Northumbria and most of Mercia were overrun by the Vikings during the 9th century. Part of Mercia and all of Kent were successfully defended but were then integrated into the Kingdom of Wessex. Because of the centralisation of power and the Viking invasions, there is little to no salvaged written evidence for the development of non-Wessex dialects after Alfred the Great's unification, until the Middle English period. History The Mercian dialect was spoken as far east as the border of East Anglia and as far west as Offa's Dyke, bordering Wales. It was spoken in an area that exte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonological History Of Old English
The phonological system of the Old English language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included a number of vowel shifts, and the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions. For historical developments prior to the Old English period, see Proto-Germanic language. Phonetic transcription Various conventions are used below for describing Old English words, reconstructed parent forms of various sorts and reconstructed Proto- West-Germanic (PWG), Proto-Germanic (PG) and Proto-Indo-European (PIE) forms: *Forms in ''italics'' denote either Old English words as they appear in spelling or reconstructed forms of various sorts. Where phonemic ambiguity occurs in Old English spelling, extra diacritics are used (''ċ'', ''ġ'', ''ā'', ''ǣ'', ''ē'', ''ī'', ''ō'', ''ū'', ''ȳ''). *Forms between /slashes/ or racketsindicate, respectively, broad (phonemic) or narrow (allophonic) pronunciation. Sounds are indicated using standard IPA notation. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sievers' Theory Of Anglo-Saxon Meter
Eduard Sievers developed a theory of the meter of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of .... This most likely would have been the theory of Anglo-Saxon prosody that Ezra Pound would have been familiar with. A line of Anglo-Saxon verse is made up of two half-lines. Each of these half-lines contains two main stresses (or 'lifts'). Sievers categorized three basic types of half-line that were used. Here a stressed syllable is represented by the symbol '/' and an unstressed syllable by the symbol 'x'. He also noted that three possible types of half-line were not used: */ x x / */ / x x *x x / / However the first two of these can be used if one of the 'dips' is changed into a half-stress (or 'half lift' ... notated here 'x́'): Reference ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language – that is, it is based on evidence from that language alone. * Comparative reconstruction, usually referred to just as reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages, belonging to the same language family, by means of the comparative method. A language reconstructed in this way is often referred to as a proto-language (the common ancestor of all the languages in a given family); examples include Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Dravidian. Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms. An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstruc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length, full articulation of the vowel, and changes in tone. The terms ''stress'' and ''accent'' are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished. For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called ''pitch accent'', and when produced through length alone, it is called ''quantitative accent''. When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called ''stress accent'' or ''dynamic accent''; English uses what is called ''variable stress accent''. Since stress can be realised through a wide range of phonetic properties, such as loudness, vowel length, and pitch (which are also used for other linguistic functions), it is difficult to define stress ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
