>Having thought about John's explanation in terms of English metrics,
>I would reject it, at least for the English hymn I quoted!
Ronnie's rejection might seem eminently reasonable, perhaps to all of
us qua simple and unsuspicious readers, but linguists should surely
be more cautious. Bearing in mind the restrictions of metrical form
it seems to me that the doubts with regard to the pragmatic
significance of many features in verse text cannot be dismissed, at
least in the present state of knowledge. The issue is simply
undecidable, one way or the other, and, consequently, verse texts
should not generally be regarded as providing strong evidence in
relation to such features as initial 'And'. There is, any way, a vast
bulk of non-metrical output in which linguists might seek for
examples, certainly for examples on which to found an argument, and
this material should be the first port of call.
>1. There would be other ways of preserving the metrics--- 'O' is the
>most obvious in the context of a hymn; but even 'O' pushes the line
>towards an exclamatory reading.
There are indeed several ways of meeting the metrical requirements,
and writers will make their choices based on a sense of what is
appropriate. But since the choice is limited this will very probably
result in some degree of compromise. The doubts remain.
> 2. The melody associated with this hymn since the beginning
>strikingly gives the initial 'And...' a beat.
This is certainly curious. The music I can find on the internet is
Campbell's 1835 piece
(http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/c/acanitbe.htm), and I suppose this
may be very similar to the melody referred to here. However, the
relationship between musical rhythm and metrical rhythm is one that
is not very clearly understood (at least I don't understand it), and
the significance of this is point is uncertain. All I can say is that
some degree of conflict between metrical and musical rhythm is not
uncommon, and looking again at the text of Wesley's poem there can be
no doubt that the metrical beat is on the second syllable.
>3. Charles Wesley had a facility with words that would make an
>explanation like John's --- 'how to begin the first sentence of an
>iambic verse' no problem to him (Charles).
I'm sure that Wesley's verbal abilities were very remarkable, but
this would make no difference to my argument, and would simply have
meant that he was adept, and probably very fast, at finding a more or
less satisfactory compromise between his communicative intent and the
metrical form. It might well have meant that with a wider range of
choices in review he would have been able select one less problematic
than the others, but there would still have been a degree of
compromise, as there must be with metrical restrictions, and this
compromise is certainly enough, in my view, to make a linguist pause.
Moreover, it is noticeable that the more able a composer of verse the
more frequently they resort to super-ingenious distortions, often
with a comic effect. Some of the technically most remarkable verse -
Barham, Hood, A. P. Herbert - is marked by a very salient degree of
distortion. Wesley's piece is not quite like these, but it does
present a mixture of elegance and mere ingenuity that is in some ways
typical of the able verse writer, as opposed to the incompetent
doggerelist. Consider, for example the following adjacent lines from
the first stanza:
Died he for me? who caused his pain!
For me? who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
The first two lines are wrenched, but technically exemplary. The
emphatic stress on 'he' overcomes the demotion of the stress on
'Died', though some loss of emphasis on the content term is the
price. The second line is syntactically odd, and would have seemed so
to Wesley's contemporaries, but is faultlessly ingenious in
maintaining just sufficient contact with the proprieties of utterance.
The second two lines, on the other hand, show little sign of
contrivance in their solution, and it is lines such as these which
probably carry the poem for most readers. I seem to think that the
other equivalent lines in subsequent stanzas are rather less
impressive, though there are some worthy competitors:
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
This is excellent verse.
>4. Initial 'and' evokes a range of weaker implicatures. What these
>are was the original enquiry.
I believe it, but are these the accidental accompaniment of a
metrical distortion, opportunistically adopted by the eagle-eyed
writer to enrich his text, or are they a happy coincidence of what
Wesley wanted to say, on the one hand, and, on the other, a metrical
convenience. My point is the simple skeptical observation that
barring some sort of linguistic revelation we shall never be able to
reach even a firm conclusion with regard to these questions.
This is not, of course, to deny that reader reports of their
reactions to initial 'and' in verse text may be of considerable use
as data to a linguist studying its use in other contexts.
-- ******************************************* John ConstableCollege Lecturer in Literary Theory and English Magdalene College, Cambridge CB30AG UK
email: jbc12@cam.ac.uk
Home Phone: 01728 663390
Research and publications information: http://mysite.freeserve.com/jbcpub/jbc.html
I. A. Richards Web Resource: http://mysite.freeserve.com/jbcpub/richards/iar.html
*******************************************
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