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VI. Notes on Chinese Prosody
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
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Certain elements are found, but in varying degree, in all human speech. Thus it is difficult to conceive of a language in which rhyme, stress-accent, tone-accent would not to some extent occur. In all languages some vowel-sounds are shorter than others, and in certain cases two consecutive words begin with the same sound. If we number these speech-elements we get (1) rhyme, (2) stress-accent, (3) tone-accent, (4) vowel-quantity, (5) alliteration. No doubt other characteristics could be enumerated, but for the purposes of poetry it is these five which have been principally exploited. English poetry has used chiefly (1), (2), and in earlier times (5); it is doubtful whether (3) has played any part, but an unconscious use has probably been made of (4).
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1918
References
page 250 note 1 Notes sur la langue … de … Pékin, p. 10Google Scholar (published in 1912 by the Association Phonétique Internationale).
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page 257 note 1 There was an increasing tendency only to use the p'ing rhymes. In later dynasties, when the pronunciation of the language had changed, poets no longer rhymed by ear. The burden of knowing by heart the rhymes in the whole 106 categories became intolerable, and to-day, if the poet avoids tsē rhymes, it is partly because he does not know them!
page 258 note 1 This has been correctly stated by most writers. It must be owing to a misprint that the Encyclopœdia Britannica (loc. cit.) gives the impression that the cæsura is after the third foot.