Weight language
Weight language is a term used by Theo Vennemann to classify the versmetric systems of the various languages of the world.
Light and heavy syllables
A language is classified as a weight language “if there is a phonologically relevant difference in it between light and heavy syllables ; the heavy syllables differ from the light syllables by a phonologically definable 'more' ”(Vennemann); this 'more' differs from one language to the next .
The German is a language weight. No weight languages are e.g. B. French and Polish .
Quantifying and non-quantifying weight languages
Within the weight languages, a distinction is made between quantitating (i.e. taking the syllable length into account) and non- quantitating weight languages.
In weight quantifying languages, light syllables are defined by being short or not weight relevant, and heavy syllables are defined by being long . A syllable is short when it is open and has a short vowel; otherwise it is long. Examples of quantifying weight languages are Arabic , Czech and Middle High German .
The NHG however, is a nichtquantitierende Weight language . Here heavy syllables are defined by having an accent ; H. are stressed , and light syllables are defined by the fact that they do not have an accent , i.e. are unstressed .
The lengths and abbreviations of syllables that exist in non-quantitating weight languages are not “weight-relevant”, that is, they do not determine the prosodic properties of this language. Conversely, the word accent that may exist in quantifying languages is not weight-relevant.
Practical use
These linguistic categories are useful in explaining difficulties in translating metric systems from one language to another. For example, ancient verse feet from Greek or Latin ( moraine counting languages ), which consist of lengths and abbreviations , had to be converted into verse feet from stressed and unstressed syllables when translated into New High German (a non- quantitating language of weight) .
Likewise, in the early modern period, the meter measures inherited from Middle High German (e.g. the Nibelung strophe ) had to be adapted to the changed prosody of New High German . According to Theo Vennemann, the metrically relatively free Knittel verse of the 15th and 16th centuries is considered a crisis symptom of this process , which, due to the incompatibility of early New High German prosody with Middle High German, is more based on the model of the syllable French metric. The successful changeover to an accent-based German metric came about in Martin Opitz 's influential work Von der deutschen Poeterey (1624). As a result of this change, among other things, the myth of the " freedom of filling " of medieval and early New High German meter measures arose .
literature
- Theo Vennemann : The collapse of quantity in the late Middle Ages and its influence on metrics. In: Amsterdam Contributions to Older German Studies 42 (1995), pp. 185–223.