A refrain (abbreviated R) is a line in a song repeated after each verse, and often used as the\ua0song’s name. Returns to R are usually high points both melodically and lyrically. E.g., a verse\ua0ending "I feel upon my lips again" makes a smooth lead-in (abbreviated L) to the refrain R =\ua0"A taste of honey" (Scott/Marlow, 1962). We notate this "(I feel upon my lips again) A taste of\ua0honey", and call such patterns (lead-in)refrains or (L)R’s. The song goes R … LR … LR, where\ua0L could change verse to verse. In our examples, R and (L)R are often both full sentences. More\ua0interesting L’s are often phrases, clauses or rather than interjections. A word-prefix L can\ua0transform R.Our main contribution is to point out that (L)R patterns are a striking feature of Telugu (TEL)\ua0song, remarkably various and profuse in both old and new songs, yet little remarked in the\ua0literature as far as we are aware. We give examples from the 15th c. to the 21st. In transcription, a\ua0colon marks long vowels, and M, nasalized ones. Retroflexion is shown by capitalization, and\ua0aspiration by h, also a consonant by itself. Glosses are given, some also /morpheme-wise/.Kannada (KAN) and Tamil (TAM) share features with TEL that help make L(R)’s: fairly free word\ua0order, agglutinative particles, and adjectives and relative clauses preceding the noun. We give\ua0only lone KAN and TAM examples, but expect to find more when we search. Hindi (HIN) shares\ua0fewer features with TEL; perhaps therefore, we have so far looked but found few (L)R s in HIN
