Syllable-Counting Meter in Soqotri Poetry

Abstract

Within the advance of generative metrical theory that is concerned with the linguistic study of versification, poetry investigation has been undeniably played a significant role in enhancing such progress. The research of linguistic scholars has been mainly focused on the exploration of English poetry with minor concentration on the examination of poetry in other languages, and that clearly implies the need of such research. Thus, the present study aims to examine the meter in Soqotri poetry under the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). It reveals that Soqotri poetry is regulated by poetic meter that constrains the size of the line with a fixed number of syllables with no systematic rhythm or alliteration. The OT analysis offered in this study derives the restrictions on the size of the line with minimality and maximality constraints. It shows the capability of OT in generating the well-formedness of non-rhythmic meter that constrains the phonological constituency in Soqotri poetry.

Markedness-Based Analysis of Englyn Meter

“…Figure 1. Prosodic Hierarchy Building on this perspective, the current research will examine the Englyn meter, mainly Englyn penfyr and Englyn milwr, in Celtic language Welsh within a markedness analysis, in the light of Optimality Theory framework (Prince and Smolensky, 1993;Aloufi, 2021a;Aloufi, 2021b).…”

“…The current research, studies Englyn meters that constrain the phonological units of a line in a verse to a certain number of syllables in Celtic language Welsh poetry. Poetic text was chosen for analysis as it clearly has a syllable-counting meter that is found in other languages such as Soqotri Poetry (Aloufi, 2021b). These poetic texts show a counting meter that restricts the quantity of syllables per line.…”