LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

BBI 3207

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Forms of sound patterning

• Phonemes• Rhyme• Alliteration• Assonance• Consonance

The sound level

Phonemes

• A phoneme is the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning. In other words, phonemes are sounds that differentiate one word from another (e.g. /hat/ vs. /hot/ or /mat/).

Phonemes

• Sound patterning can be generally grouped into:

1.types of rhyme – involve the end of the syllable

2.types of alliteration – involve the beginning of the syllable

Forms of sound patterningForms of sound patterning

• Rhyme: full rhyme, incomplete rhyme

• Alliteration• Assonance• Consonance

Rhyme

• The ends of lines of poetry, usually the last syllable of the words which rhyme

• Phonemic parallelism• Rhyme schemes - patterns of the rhymes (e.g.

couplet schemes (AABB etc.), alternate line rhyme schemes (ABAB etc.).

• e. g. 'Mankind' and 'behind'

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• Rhyme: – two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and

all following sounds are identical; – two lines of poetry rhyme if their final strong

positions are filled with rhyming words. |Humpty |Dumpty |sat on a |wall|Humpty |Dumpty |had a great |fall|All the king’s |horses and |all the king’s |men|Couldn’t put |Humpty to|gether a|gain

Full rhyme• Sometimes known as perfect, true or exact rhyme. This is a case

when the stressed vowels and all following consonants and vowels are identical, but the consonants preceding the rhyming vowels are different e.g. chain, drain; soul, mole. In other words this is a case of near-exact repetitions of end-sounds.

Incomplete rhyme• Also known as half-rhymes, which are not exact repetitions

but are close enough to resonate e.g. supper, blubber.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.(Shakespeare, Sonnet 130)

• The first sound of the syllable is not repeated, otherwise it is a word repetition.

• Each line is a separate grammatical statement invites us to pause at the end of each line.

• Pause is emphasised by a rhyme word on the last stressed syllable; also suggest mental rhythm of speaker, thinking thins through one idea at a time.

• Pause + syntactical completeness + monosyllabic rhyme sound + stress ‘heavy’ effect

• Rhyme words contain key ideas, further heightened by the contrast of sun/dun.

last stressed

vowel and final

consonant

Eye rhyme• two words are spelled similarly but pronounced

differently• e.g. slaughter and laughter; bough and cough • Groups of words where there is no phonetic rhyme but

there is graphological parallelism involving more than one letter in each sequence.

• Characteristics of many English poems, written in Middle English or in The Renaissance contain rhymes that were originally true or full rhymes, but as read by modern readers, they are now eye rhymes because of shifts in pronunciation.

Advantages of rhyme

• By repeating a sound regularly, it foregrounds the patterned, musical nature of the text, heightening our attention to the general sound texture.

• The anticipation of a rhyme word creates a sense of suspense in the reader, thus adding a psychological drama to the act of reading.

• Searching for a rhyme word can stimulate the imagination, as it suggests ideas which may otherwise not have occurred to them.

Advantages of rhyme• By meeting the technical demands of rhyme without

forcing unlikely words into their writing, poets have a chance to show of their skills– Devices like rhyme and metre can be in tension with natural

colloquial rhythms draw attention to the writing as literary art.My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun – conversationalBut the use of regular metre, rhyme and other effects make the

verse as a literary utterance

• Creates a link between two words e.g. red and head; also point out semantic links like similarity or contrast e.g. sun/dun

End-stopped line

• The line-end coincides with a major syntactic boundary (i.e. sentence / clause)

• When the units of sense in a passage of poetry coincide with the verses, and the sense does not run on from one verse to another

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,"Most women have no characters at all."Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.

(Alexander Pope, Epistle II: To a Lady)

Each verse seems to contain a complete idea

Enjambment (run-on)Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day.

(Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress)

-Clause does not coincide with the verse line-The force way is reduced by the requirement to read straight on into the next line

Enjambment (run-on)- When the verse length does not match the length of

the units of sense (clauses, sentences, etc.)- Since the grammatical structure is not complete, one

will expect more to come:Since we agreed to let the road between us

Fall to disuse,And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,And turned all time's eroding agents loose,Silence, and space, and strangers - our neglectHas not had much effect.

(Philip Larkin, No Road)

Alliteration

• The repetition of sound, usually consonant, at the beginning of words.

Example:

• sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen, bigger and better, jump for joy

• And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind. (Wordsworth)

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• Alliteration: repetition of the initial consonant of a word– Magazine articles: “Science has Spoiled my

Supper” and “Too Much Talent in Tennessee?”– Comic/cartoon characters: Beetle Bailey, Donald

Duck – Restaurants: Coffee Corner, Sushi Station – Expressions: busy as a bee, dead as a doornail,

good as gold, right as rain, etc... – Novels: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff,

Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin”

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• Sometimes alliteration can occur when there is no ‘spelling alliteration’.

These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see,Are others' gain, but killing cares to me;

(George Crabbe, ‘The Village’, I, 216-217)

“Loose alliteration”

A dreadful winter came, each day severe, Misty when mild, and icy cold when clear;

“Full alliteration”

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• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences – The sound of the ground is a noun.– Hear the mellow wedding bells. (Poe)– And murmuring of innumerable bees

(Tennyson)– The crumbling thunder of seas (Stevenson)– That solitude which suits abstruser musings

(Coleridge)– Dead in da middle of little Italy, little did

we know that we riddled some middle men who didn't do diddily. (Big Pun)

Assonance• Connects important words together and helps

reader notice meaning-connections between them.

• Although there are 5 vowels in the English spelling system, there are 12 pure vowel sounds in ‘BBC’ English.

• There are even more vowel sounds if we include the diphthongs i.e. play, boy

You’ll never get a better bit of butter on your knife

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• Consonance: The repetition of two or more consonants using different vowels within words.– All mammals named Sam are clammy – And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple

curtain (Poe)– Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile /

Whether jew or gentile I rank top percentile. (Hip-hop music)

Onomatopoeia

• Sound symbolism - a word that imitates the sound it represents

• Example:splash, wow, gush, kerplunk

• Examples: Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard, / He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred; Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear; / Tlot tlot, tlot tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?

("The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes)

ONOMATOPOEIA

• Words that imitate the sound they are naming

BUZZ• OR sounds that imitate another sound

“The silken, sad, uncertain, rustling of each purple curtain . . .”

Which words below are sound symbolic?

SplashBookContraceptiveYellowSplishSandwich

dressStudentWallDogBuzz

The extract in the next slide is from a famous poem by the C18 poet, Alexander Pope. It is written in rhyming couplets and he called it 'an heroi-comical poem'.

He wrote it in response to hearing about a high-society quarrel between two noble families over the fact that Lord Petre had forcibly cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair.

Pope's poem makes fun of this incident. Here, his 'heroine' the Lady Belinda, is seated at her dressing table, putting her make-up on.

Here piles of pins extend their shining rows,Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billets-doux.Now awful Beauty puts on all its Arms;The Fair each moment rises in her Charms, . . .(Alexander Pope , 'The Rape of the Lock', Canto I, 137-40)

• What patterns of /p/ alliteration can you see in lines 1 and 2.

• Are they all equally strong? • What effects do you think are

associated with them? • Discuss your ideas with a partner.

Below is one of the stanzas from 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', written using phonemic symbols. 'Translate' it into ordinary written English and then compare your version with the written original.

/wɒtpɑ:sɪŋbelzfəði:zhu:daɪəzkætləʊnlɪðəmɒnstrəsæŋgərəvðəgʌnzəʊnlɪðəstʌtrɪŋraɪflzræpɪdrætlkənpætəraʊtðeəheɪstɪɒrɪznz/

(Wilfred Owen, 'Anthem for Doomed Youth')

/wɒtpɑ:sɪŋbelzfəði:zhu:daɪəzkætləʊnlɪðəmɒnstrəsæŋgərəvðəgʌnzəʊnlɪðəstʌtrɪŋraɪflzræpɪdrætlkənpætəraʊtðeəheɪstɪɒrɪznz/

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.

(Wilfred Owen, 'Anthem for Doomed Youth')This poem is specifically about the death of a soldier and the notification of that death to his family.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?Only the monstrous anger of the guns.Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.

(Wilfred Owen, 'Anthem for Doomed Youth')

Identify all the examples of alliteration, assonance and rhyme you can find in this stanza. Describe how you think these patterns are being used in relation to meaning and effect (if at all).

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?/wɒtpɑ:sɪŋbelzfəði:zhu:daɪəzkætl/

/p-b/ connection in 'passing bells' /z-s/ at the end of /belz/ and /ði:z/.

No significant interpretative connections.

Only the monstrous anger of the guns./əʊnlɪðəmɒnstrəsæŋgərəvðəgʌnz/

/s/ alliteration within 'monstrous' - helps to underline the deviant semantic relation between it and 'anger of the guns'.

/g/ alliteration between 'anger' and 'guns‘ - brings out another deviant semantic relation.

Guns cannot be angry as they are not human, and the feeling that the guns being fired is monstrous must be on the part of someone else looking on

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/əʊnlɪðəstʌtrɪŋraɪflzræpɪdrætl/

Alliteration is much more dense. The /t/ alliteration in 'stuttering' and 'rattle' - 'rapid'. The phrase 'the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle' are all connected by /r/. This alliterative intensity is, connected with an onomatopoeic effect. The line is usually said to imitate rifle fire. Assonance between the first syllables of 'rapid' and 'rattle‘ - those two vowel sounds are short vowels, and all the vowels except one in 'the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle' are also short, helping further to mimic the noise of the guns. sound-symbolic effects

Sound symbolismIn the four lines quoted below from Keats's 'Ode to Autumn', the last line is often felt by readers to be sound symbolic. What phonetic properties give rise to this feeling?

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keepSteady thy laden head across a brook;Or by a cider press, with patient look,Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

(John Keats More about John Keats, 'To Autumn')

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.•The sound symbolic quality here is essentially based on length. •A phonemic transcription of the phrase is:

/lɑ:stu:zɪŋzaɑ:əzbaɪaʊəz/Almost all of the vowels are long. •/ɑ:/ and /u:/ are pure vowels marked for length in the transcription by the ':' symbol. •/aɪ/ is a diphthong, and all diphthongs are long because they involve a pronunciation glide from one pure vowel to another •The repeated word /aɑ:əz/ is a tripthong, and so is even longer! •The only short vowel is the /ɪ/ in the second syllable of 'oozings', and this syllable is unstressed, and so not very salient perceptually.•In addition, the /s/ and /z/ sounds are also long consonants.

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

/lɑ:stu:zɪŋzaɑ:əzbaɪaʊəz/The dense patterning of long vowels and consonants is felt to be appropriate to the length of time it takes to extract the juice from the apples, thus producing the sound symbolic effect, and in perceiving this relationship readers tend to ignore the few consonants (e.g. /j/ and /t/ which are short phonemes.

The sound symbolism relation here is one between length of sounds and length of time, notice, and so is not onomatopoeic.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings

(D. H. Lawrence, Piano)

Write down (i) what you think the effects are and (b) what phonetic characteristics relate to these effects.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings

(D. H. Lawrence, Piano)An adult is remembering what it was like when he was a child. For the child sitting under the piano, because he is very close to the strings of the piano, the noises are likely to be (a) loud and (b) full of resonance, even when they will seem like clear 'tinkling' noises to others in the room. The word 'boom' is sound symbolic of this auditory experience - it is voiced throughout (maximising the resonance in the word) and has a long vowel and a nasal, suggesting sound length for the piano notes.

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings

(D. H. Lawrence, Piano)The repeated high front vowel /ɪ/ is a short, clear sound and so is the repeated /t/.These qualities give rise to the idea of a series of bright, short notes - 'tinkling' This more distinct perception seems to represent mainly the view of the adult.So with 'boom' we get the child's viewpoint alone, but with 'tingling strings' we get a blend of the viewpoint of the adult looking back and the original perceptual experience of the child.

Rhythm

• The regular periodic beat.• “a unit which is usually larger than the syllable, and which

contains one stressed syllable, marking the recurrent beat, and optionally, a number of unstressed syllables” (Leech (1969): 105).

• It may involve a succession of weak and strong stress; long and short; high and low and other contrasting segments of utterance. Rhythm can occur in prose as well as in verse.

Meter• Meter is a type of rhythm of accented and unaccented

syllables organized into feet, aka patterns. • It is determined by the character and number of syllables in a

line. Meter is also dependent on the way the syllables are accented.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18”)

• The above line consists of ten syllables that show a pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables: 1st syllable unstressed, 2nd syllable stressed, 3rd syllable unstressed…. 10th syllable. The unstressed syllable is underlined while the stressed syllable is in bold (Cumming 2006).

Foot – stress patterning

• A foot is made up of a pair of unstressed and stressed syllables. Thus, the above line altogether contains five feet (see below):

1 2 3 4 5 Shall I..|.. compare |.. thee to..|.. a sum..|.. mer’s day?

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Stress patterningStress patterning

• Iamb: 2 syllables, unstressed + stressed• Trochee: 2 syllables, stressed + unstressed• Anapest: 3 syllables, 2 unstressed + stressed• Dactyl: 3 syllables, stressed + 2 unstressed• Spondee: 2 stressed syllables• Pyrrhic: 2 unstressed syllables

5 types of Feet

Iamb (Iambic)

Unstressed + Stressed Two Syllables"To be or not to be" (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

Trochee (Trochaic)

Stressed + Unstressed Two Syllables

"Double, double, toil and trouble." (Shakespeare’s Macbeth)

Spondee (Spondaic)

Stressed + Stressed Two Syllables“heartbreak”

Anapest (Anapestic)

Unstressed + Unstressed + Stressed

Three Syllables

"I arise and unbuild it again" (Shelley's Cloud)

Dactyl (Dactylic

Stressed + Unstressed + Unstressed

Three Syllables

“Openly”

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Metrical patterningMetrical patterning

• Dimetre: 2 feet• Trimetre: 3 feet• Tetrametre: 4 feet• Pentametre: 5 feet• Hexametre: 6 feet• Heptametre: 7 feet• Octametre: 8 feet

Meter depends on the type of foot and the number of feet in a line. Below are the types of meter and the line length:

Monometer One FootDimeter Two FeetTrimeter Three FeetTetrameter Four FeetPentameter Five FeetHexameter Six FeetHeptameter Seven FeetOctameter Eight Feet

    1              2               3              4              5 Shall I..|.. compare |.. thee to..|.. a sum..|.. mer’s day?

Practice:

Here's an example of how a line by Shakespeare is divided into feet:

from FAIR | est CREA | tures WE | deSIRE | inCREASE