In Memoriam: Arvo Krikmann (1939–2017)

In Memoriam: Arvo Krikmann (1939–2017

Poetic metre as a function of language: linguistic grounds for metrical variation in Estonian runosongs

The article focuses on the relationship of language and metre in case of oral poetry, more exactly, to what extent and through which processes the changes in language have induced the changes in metre in case of Estonian runosong, a branch of common Finnic poetic-musical tradition. The Estonian language has gone through a series of notable phonological changes during approximately last 500 to 700 years that have systematically shortened the word forms; the extent of these changes varies across dialects. At the same time the language of runosongs has partly resisted these changes, and partly adopted; the archaic and new word forms are in concurrent use, and vary geographically. The metre of Estonian runosongs appears to be a transitional form from quantitative runosong metre (Kalevala metre) to the accentual runosong metre (both of them syllabic metres). The current study shows that the transition depends directly on the average syllabic length of the words in runosongs (the longer the words, the more quantitative the metre, and vice versa), which in turn is induced by the shortening of words in dialectal language. The closer look at the points of tensions between the metre and language, i.e. the geographical distribution of the morphological forms that are critical for building the verses in quantitative metre and have been systematically retained in runosongs (but shortened in language) shows that in two metrically innovative areas runosongs have given up preserving the archaic word forms, while in big central area between a linguistically and metrically conservative centre in the North-East of Estonia and two innovation centres in Western and Southeastern Estonia the archaic and newer word forms are used concurrently. The slight difference between the metre of western and southeastern runosongs follows the prosodic patterns of dialectal language. The side topic of the article discusses the questions of the evolution of runosong in the light of newer theories of emergence of Finnic languages (in the first millennium BC) and poetic system of runosongs, but apparently the metrical variation of runosong is entirely explicable by the impact of much later language changes (approximately 500 to 700 years ago) and seems not to be able to answer the questions related to the emergence of the poetic tradition

Conference on Finnic runo-song tradition

Conference on Finnic runo-song traditio

What to Call the Poetic Form : Kalevala-Meter or Kalevalaic Verse, regivärss, Runosong, the Finnic Tetrameter, Finnic Alliterative Verse or Something Else?

Non peer reviewe

The Metrics of Seto Choral Laments in the Context of Runosong Metrics

The aim of this paper is to get an overview of the lament metrics in Seto oral song tradition, which belongs to the southern border area of the Finnic song tradition, and the placement and historical development of lament metrics in the framework of the whole Seto oral song tradition. In the paper the metrical structures of two main genres of Seto choral laments – choral bridal laments and death laments – are analysed that share common features with solo laments and are similar to the structures of Seto runosongs. Metrical structures of the laments are detected based on sound recordings, taking into account the linguistic structure of the lines and the varied realization of it in a musical performance rhythm. The analysis showed that laments’ metrics where 5-unit end structures play an important role, differs the most from the main body of runosongs and is structurally more similar to a group of runosongs with refrains and varying line length. Outlining the development patterns of the metrical system of Seto songs, the influences of local unique musical tradition with varied rhythmic structures atypical of the most runosong area, specific functions of ritual song genres, historical changes in language, as well as possible external connections to early eastern and southern song cultures are highlighted

Recognising Intertextuality in the Digital Corpus of Finnic Oral Poetry : Experiment with the Sampo Cycle

While digital corpora have enabled new perspectives into the variation and continuums of human communication, they often pose problems related to implicit biases of the data and the limited reach of current methods in recognising similarity in linguistically complex data, especially in small languages. The digital corpus of historical Finnic oral poetry in alliterative tetrametre is characterised by significant poetic, linguistic and orthographic variation. At the extreme, a word may be written in hundreds of different ways. The current corpus comprises 189,189 poetic texts in six Finnic languages (Karelian, Ingrian, Votic, Estonian, Seto and Finnish) recorded in 1564–1957 by 5,287 recorders. It has a long curation history and significant bias towards some genres, poetic forms and regions that collectors have preferred. In this poetic tradition, an idea is typically expressed with several parallel, partly alternative poetic lines or motifs, and similar verse types may be used in different contexts. A manual attempt to find all the occurrences of widely used expressions or motifs in the corpus is an unattainable task. While the digital tools—starting from simple queries to more advanced methods—make it possible to aim at wider intertextual analyses, some part of relevant material is typically not reached. Thus, it becomes central to estimate the amount and quality of the relevant data that is not recognised with different methods. Here, we discuss two strategies for mapping intertextuality in the corpus: 1) proceeding with text queries and 2) recognising similar poetic lines computationally, based on string similarity. We compare these approaches with one another, and then proceed to compare the results they yield with the existing type index and the results of manual early 20th-century research. While the methodological and theoretical foundations of this type of research no longer hold, and while our further interest lies in the intertextuality and variation rather than in the problematic concept of poem types, parts of earlier analyses may be used in evaluating the performance of digital approaches.Peer reviewe

Metric Variation in the Finnic Runosong Tradition : A Rough Computational Analysis of the Multilingual Corpus

This article represents a first step in the corpus-based study of metric variation in Finnic runosong, a poetic tradition shared by several Finnic peoples and documented extensively in the 19th and 20th centuries. Runosong metre has generally been assumed to be a syllabic tetrametric trochee with specific rules about the placement of stressed syllables according to their quantity: long stressed syllables occupy the strong positions in the trochaic schema while short stressed syllables appear in the weak positions. Recent studies by Mari Sarv (2008, 2015, 2019) of Estonian runosong metre have shown, however, that due to linguistic changes, it has gradually lost its quantitative properties and acquired the features of accentual metre. Using computational methods, this study aims to give a preliminary overview of the extent of metric variation on the quantitative-accentual scale across the entire Finnic runosong area. After an approximate syllabification, we apply two separate indirect methods for estimating variation. These appear to generate coherent results: quantitative runosong metre dominates in the north-east and has gradually been replaced by accentual runosong metre towards the south-west. Subsequent studies should verify these results through more precise and detailed investigations.Peer reviewe

Plotting Poetry 3. Conference report

Plotting Poetry 3. Conference repor

Plotting Poetry 5: Popular Voices, 4–6 July 2022, Tartu, Estonia

Plotting Poetry 5: Popular Voices, 4–6 July 2022, Tartu, Estoni