Re: discourse initial 'and' & verse textThanks John, I like your arguments!
Ronnie
----- Original Message -----
From: John Constable
To: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2003 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: discourse initial 'and' & verse text
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.
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John Constable
College 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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