Tone diffraction

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Tone diffraction is a literary term from verse teaching .

If the natural accentuation of a word or syllable of a word in a poem does not match the otherwise predominant meter of the poem, it is called pitch inflection . When the poem is recited, this pitch inflection can be balanced out by floating accentuation .

Example (excerpt from Goethe's poem "Welcome and Farewell"):

It beat my heart, swiftly on horseback!
It was thought almost done anyway.
The evening was already rocking the earth.
And the night hung on the mountains:

The poem predominantly shows a clearly recognizable regular alternation of elevation and depression (unstressed and stressed syllable, iambus). In line two, however, this meter collides with the natural way of speaking, since the word “almost” is stressed no less than the previous last syllable in “done”.

It would also run counter to the natural flow of language to clearly accentuate the following word "eh". The second syllable in "done" as well as the syllables in "fast" and "eh" are in principle accentuated equally. The author of a poem can consciously use pitch diffraction if, for example, the regular form is broken. See also the article floating emphasis .

literature