Comma

A comma (plural comma ; Greek  κόμμα "section", "cut") is in the ancient Verslehre a short section of words 1-3 or 2-6 syllables in a period derived from the rhetorical structure in comma , colon and period . In contrast to the colon , the comma does not form an independent unit of meaning. Usually it appears as through a secondary caesura formed subsidiary part of the colon formed by a major turning point.

In the German metric, the comma corresponds most closely to the concept of the word foot , coined by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , as can be seen in the well-known Klopstock example of the structure of a sentence in word feet:

“A terrible sound | the winged | Thunder song | in the host. "

Here the second word foot is syntactically dependent and the relative brevity of the structural units is structured in accordance with speaking bars of roughly the same length.

literature

• Otto Knörrich: Lexicon of lyrical forms (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 479). 2nd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-520-47902-8 , p. 119.
• Gero von Wilpert : Subject dictionary of literature. Special edition of the 8th, improved and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-520-84601-3 , p. 423.