Syllable length

“ A syllable, in modern verse, is heavy or light, according as it is accented or unaccented—that is to say, according as it receives stress from the voice or not. In the word “tulip,” for instance, the syllables are of equal length, but the accent is strongly upon the first. ”

“ The Latin quantitative principle in versification has given way in Spanish to that of syllabification simply. Account is taken, as a rule, not of the greater or less length of the vowel in the syllabic, but of the number of the syllables in a line and of their rhythmical accent.
(α) Vowels and Syllables Within a Word.
A problem of importance is to determine, when two or more vowels come together, whether they form one syllable or more. The vowels are either strong (a, e, o) or weak (i, y, u) , and they come together under three chief conditions ”

“ The simplest and smallest unit of speech-sound is the syllable; then follow, in increasing magnitude, the word, the phrase (that is, words held together by their meaning or by their sound) , the clause, the sentence, the paragraph. These units exist in verse as well as in prose, but while verse has other units (which are arbitrary and artificial) , prose rhythm has only these. The rhythm of a paragraph is determined by the length, structure, content, and arrangement of the sentences ”

“ The open vowel sounds, which are commonly but not very accurately termed long, are those which are the most easily protracted, yet they often occur in the shortest and feeblest syllables; while, on the other hand, no vowel sound, that occurs under the usual stress of accent or of emphasis, is either so short in its own nature, or is so "quickly joined to the succeeding letter," that the syllable is not one of long quantity. ”

“ And here let me pause to assert that more pitiable nonsense has been written on the topic of long and short syllables than on any other subject under the sun. In general, a syllable is long or short, just as it is difficult or easy of enunciation. The natural long syllables are those encumbered–the natural short syllables are those unencumbered with consonants; all the rest is mere artificiality and jargon. The Latin Prosodies have a rule that a "vowel before two consonants is long." ”

“ It is quite true that the proportion of syllables of absolutely fixed quantity—that is fixed capacity of filling up what corresponds to the long or short places of a classical verse—is, in English, very small. There are some which the ear discovers by the awkwardness of the sound when they are forced into a "short" place. So also there are some which—by the coincidence of vowel quality, position, and absence of accent—it is practically impossible to put into a "long" place, such as the second syllable of "Deity." ”

“ A syllable is usually a vowel, either alone or in combination with consonants, uttered with a single impulse of stress; but certain consonants may form syllables: oven (= ov-n) , battle (= bæt-l) ; (cf. also the vulgar pronunciation of elm) .
A syllable may be (1) weak or strong, (2) open or closed, (3) long or short.
(1) A weak syllable receives a light stress. Its vowel sound is often different from that of the corresponding strong, or stressed, syllable. Cf. weak and strong my in “I want my lárge hat” and “I want mý hat.”
(2) An open syllable ends in a vowel or diphthong: dē-man, to deem ”

“ The foot of two syllables usually consists of one long and one short syllable, and though it is not essential that either should come first, the short precedes rather more commonly.
The foot of three syllables never has more than one long syllable in it, and that syllable, save in the most exceptional rhythms, is always the first or the third. In modern poetry, by no means usually, but not seldom, it has no long syllable at all. ”

“ Our usual prosodies maintain that a long syllable is equal, in its time, to two short ones; this, however, is but an approach to the truth. It should be here observed that the quantity of an English syllable has no dependence upon the sound of its vowel or dipthong [diphthong] , but [depends] chiefly upon accentuation. Monosyllables are exceedingly variable, and, for the most part, may be either long or short, to suit the demand of the rhythm. In polysyllables, the accented ones [say, syllables] are always long, while those which immediately precede or succeed them, are always short. ”

“ In every word there are as many syllables as there are distinct sounds, or separate impulses of the voice; as, gram-ma-ri-an.
A word of one syllable is called a monosyllable; a word of two syllables, a dissyllable; a word of three syllables, a trissyllable; and a word of four or more syllables, a polysyllable.
Every vowel, except w, may form a syllable of itself; but the consonants belong to the vowels or diphthongs; and without a vowel no syllable can be formed. ”

“ In dūcēbās both the vowels and the syllables are long; in volvunt the vowels are short, but the syllables are long; in cases like the last the syllables (not the vowels) are said to be long by position. h does not count as a consonant (58) and qu (or qv, 27) has the value of a single consonant only: thus, in adhūc and aqua the first syllable is short.
178. In prose or old dramatic verse a syllable with a short vowel before a mute or f followed by l or r is not long: as tenebrae. In other verse, however, such syllables are sometimes regarded as long. ”

“ There is a tendency toward the coincidence of long and accented, and of short and unaccented, syllables. This we have seen to be true in two different senses. In the first place, an accented syllable is likely to be lengthened for the same reason that it is accented—because of its relative importance in the place where it stands. In the second place, syllables noticeably long are avoided in those places in the verse where the accent does not fall, and are preferred where the stress is heavy. ”

“ The strength of the expiration may be greatest either at the beginning, the end or the middle of the syllable, and, according as it is so, the accent is a falling, a rising, or a rising and falling one. Syllables in which the stress is produced continuously whether increasing or decreasing are called single-pointed syllables, those in which a variation in the stress occurs without being strong enough to break the syllable into two are called double-pointed syllables. ”

“ A syllable of this kind may retain its full value, so as to form by itself the entire thesis of a foot. (2) It may be slurred, so that it combines with another unaccented syllable to form a thesis. (3) It may lose its syllabic value altogether, its vowel being elided and its consonantal part (if it has any) being attracted to the root-syllable. By the last-mentioned process, as is well known, the number of inflexional syllables has been greatly reduced in Modern as compared with Middle and Old English. ”

“ A diphthong is usually long (§ 5, B, 2) , but the preposition prae in composition is often shortened before a vowel; as, prăĕacūtus.
3. A syllable containing a short vowel followed by two consonants (§ 5, B, 2) is long, even when one of the consonants is in the following word; as, terret populum. Occasionally the syllable is long when both consonants are in the following word; as, prō segete spīcās. ”

“ The terms long and short, which are often used to denote certain vowel sounds; being also used, with a different import, to distinguish the quantity of syllables, are frequently misunderstood; for which reason, we have substituted for them the terms open and close;--the former, to denote the sound usually given to a vowel when it forms or ends an accented syllable; as, ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by;--the latter, to denote the sound which the vowel commonly takes when closed by a consonant ”

“ More curious still is his way of approaching trisyllabic metres. As such, he will not so much as speak of them. "Verses of nine and eleven syllables," it seems, "are of two sorts." "Those accented on the last save one" are merely the redundant eights and tens already spoken of. "The other [class] is those that are accented on the last syllable, which are employed only in compositions for music, and in the lowest sort of burlesque poetry, the disagreeableness of their measure having wholly excluded them from grave and serious subjects." ”

“ A syllable may be made long by the very fact of its being short. It is the practice of the English language to signify the shortness of a vowel by doubling the consonant that follows. Hence we get such words as pitted, knotty, massive, &c.—words in which no one considers that the consonant is actually doubled. For do we not pronounce pitted and pitied alike? Consonants that appear double to the eye are common enough. Really double consonants—consonants that sound double to the ear—are rarities, occurring in one class of words only—viz. ”

“ Every English verse which has disengaged itself from the versicle [1] is composed, and all verses that are disengaging themselves therefrom show a nisus towards being composed, of feet of one, two, or three syllables.
The foot of one syllable is always long, strong, stressed, accented, what-not. ”

“ Whenever, in a word of two or more syllables an unaccented vowel or digraph occurs in the last syllable between a liquid (l, m, n, r) and any other consonant, or between two liquids, the unaccented vowel or digraph is elided whenever the word is lengthened by a grammatical inflection beginning with a vowel. ”

“ In its rhythmical effect upon the ear, a supernumerary short syllable at the end of a line, may sometimes, perhaps, compensate for the want of such a syllable at the beginning of the next line, as may be seen in the fourth example above; but still it is unusual, and seems improper, to suppose such syllables to belong to the scansion of the subsequent line; for the division of lines, with their harmonic pauses, is greater than the division of feet, and implies that no foot can ever actually be split by it. ”

“ And hence I earnestly protest—and I hope you, Mr Editor, agree with me—against the license claimed by Southey, of using any foot of two or three syllables at the beginning of a line, to avoid the exotic and forced character, which, he says, the verse would assume if every line were to begin with a long syllable. No, no, my dear sir; this will never do. If we are to have hexameters at all, every line must begin with a long syllable. It is true, that this is sometimes difficult to attain. ”

“ In dealing with this measure, we have not thought it necessary to follow the precise arrangement of the original in the alternation of seven and eight syllable lines. In other words, we have sometimes represented a seven-syllable line by one of eight syllables, an eight-syllable xxxiiiline by one of seven. ”

“ Syllables closed by two or more consonants are mostly long, as in vīLLa, luSCinia, iNTeRDum, paRTem, uMBRa, feneSTRa; so too are syllables containing a double vowel, as in nAUtAE. But many syllables ending in a single consonant and containing a single vowel are also long, because the vowel is itself a long vowel: these vowels are marked in the text and vocabularies of this book. Thus beata and antiqua have the middle syllable long, and are therefore marked beāta, antīqua: and it is because the middle syllable in each of these words has a long vowel in it that it is accented (beáta, antíqua) . ”

“ Another powerful means of lengthening a vowel is accent. When a vowel receives the full force of the accent by coming at the end of an accented syllable it is almost invariably made long. We see this in monosyllables such as he, no, etc. It is often necessary to strengthen by an additional silent vowel, however, as in tie, sue, view, etc., and a has a peculiarity in that when it comes at the end of a syllable alone it has the sound of ah, or a Italian, rather than that of a long, and we have pa, ma, etc., and for the long sound y is added, as in say, day, ray. ”

“ Many of the inflections of nouns and verbs are formed by adding one or more syllables to the root. The final {32}consonant of the root must always be considered as belonging to the radical part, not to the adjected termination. The sound of that consonant, whether broad or small, falls to be determined by the quality of the vowel which precedes it in the same syllable, not by the quality of that which follows it in the next syllable. It seems, therefore, unnecessary to employ any more vowels in the adjected syllable than what are sufficient to represent its own vocal sound. ”

“ Observe that most of the feet have two syllables each, while two have three. But if you read the lines in a natural tone you will see that you give just as much time to one foot as to another, and where there are three syllables they are short and can be pronounced quickly. Some syllables take more time to pronounce than other syllables; and to accent a syllable simply means to give it more time in pronouncing. In music, time is accurately represented by notes, and a bar of music always contains exactly the same amount of time, no matter how it is divided by the notes ”

“ A syllable is long by nature, when its vowel is naturally long, as causa, concīdō; it is long by position, when its vowel is followed by two consonants or a double consonant, as stirpis, sermō, discessit. All diphthongs and such simple vowels as have originated in a contraction are by nature long, as caedō, proelium, audāx ”

“ Attention is directed to the word vowel. The longness or shortness of a vowel is one thing. The longness or shortness of a syllable another. This difference is [99] important in prosody; especially in comparing the English with the classical metres.
The vowel in the syllable see is long; and long it remains, whether it stand as it is, or be followed by a consonant, as in see-n, or by a vowel, as in see-ing.
The vowel in the word sit is short. If followed by a vowel it becomes unpronounceable, except as the ea in seat or the i in sight. By a consonant, however, it may be followed. ”