2009 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
An Optimality-Theoretic Approach to the Rhythmic Structure of English Verse
| Project/Area Number |
19520412
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
English linguistics
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| Research Institution | Ibaraki University |
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Principal Investigator |
OKAZAKI Masao Ibaraki University, 人文学部, 准教授 (30233315)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2007 – 2009
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| Keywords | 近代英語 / 英詩 / 韻律 / 韻律的倒置 / インターフェイス / 最適性理論 / hymn meter / Emily Dickinson |
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| Research Abstract |
The rhythmic structure of Emily Dickinson's poems has been said to defy generalizations because of its apparent complexity and irregularity. However, it is shown to be simple and regulated by a limited set of ranked Optimality-Theoretic constraints. In particular, four markedness constraints on the well-formedness of iambic verse lines are proposed which exhibit four different rankings. The constraints and their rankings enable us to reduce seemingly a large number of rhythmic patterns of her poems to only four patterns and prove to be plausible devices which can also capture the distribution of metrical inversion cases in other Modern English poems.
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