Second Thoughts on English Prosody

Abstract

IN Illustration and Defense of a Theory of the Iambic Pentameter (CE, elsewhere in this issue; henceforth IDT) Samuel Jay Keyser and Morris Halle have responded negatively to the assessment of their theory contained in our paper Study of English Prosody: an Alternative Proposal (CE, May, 1970, henceforth SEP). In the five years since it was first put forth,' the theory which Professors Halle and Keyser defend has undergone certain modifications which now invalidate some of the detail of our initial objections. The modifications they have undertaken result generally in the reduction of the overall proportion of stress maxima in the language so that the principle now casts a wider net. Thus, certain strings previously deemed unmetrical can now be accounted for. And since no new instances of unmetricality are uncovered in the data, one can say that the theory has been generally weakened, the consequences of which we shall consider later.