Beyond Pure Reason

Gasparov, Boris

doi:10.7312/gasp15780

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In versification studies, the association between meter and meaning, an effect also known as "semantic halo of meter", is a well-studied area with a long scholarly tradition. First examined qualitatively in rare metrical forms that formed particularly noticeable connection with a set of distinctive themes (Taranovskij 1963;Jakobson 1979Jakobson [1938; Vishnevskij 1985;Gasparov 2012Gasparov [1999; Shapir 2015), semantic halo effect was also found in a number of European poetic traditions (Talinskaya, Oganesova 1986;Tarlinskaya 1989;Červenka 1991;Gasparov 2012;Dobrzyńska 2014). Further studies demonstrated the effect in large historical corpora in multiple languages via computational modelling (Šeļa et al 2020, Šeļa et al 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous large-scale studies (Gasparov 2012;Šeļa et al 2022) show that stable relationship between semantics and form exists not only in less frequent meters, but also in wide-spread forms that became central to a tradition: for example, iambic pentameter in English, trochaic and iambic pentameters in Czech, iambic tetrameter in Russian. Commonly used meters, however, are often described as being "universal", or semantically "neutral": potentially any theme can be encountered within them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The fall of genres that did not happen: formalising history of the “universal” semantics of Russian iambic tetrameter

Martynenko,

Šeļa

2023

SMP

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This paper examines thematic features of the “universal” poetic meters that are disproportionately popular in a tradition. Focusing on the example of 19th-century Russian iambic tetrameter, we propose a method for diachronic analysis of semantic structure of a meter based on the combination of topic modelling and network analysis. We represent each poem as topic probabilities and use most probable topics appearing within one poem to build up the connections of a network. This representation allows us to detect a chronological process of semantic expansion of the meter: its usage spreads to various thematic domains contributing to its perception as “universal”. At the same time, we show that the expansion of iambic tetrameter does not lead to the collapse of semantic traditions of other meters and their associations with certain genres. Testing the amount of shared connections between meters against randomized data demonstrates that the increase in number of topics within a meter is mostly driven by the sample size, rather than by the direct borrowing from other meters. The stability of thematic connections inside each meter displays the conservative nature of poetic meters and surprisingly strong retention of association between meter and semantics.

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