The Junacki Deseterac (Heroic Decasyllable)

Serbo-Croatian oral epic tradition takes two primary metrical forms, the fifteen-syllabic bugarštica , also called the "long line," and the ten-syllable junacki deseterac or "heroic decasyllable."^[58] While both have venerable histories in the poetic tradition—the bugarštica , for example, serving as the medium for a song in Petar Hektorovic's^[*] Ribanje , the earliest extant recorded folk poetry in the language (published in 1568)—we shall be concerned in these studies strictly with the deseterac , the meter of the Stolac Return Songs, our Serbo-Croatian comparand for the ancient Greek Odyssey and Old English Beowulf . As an organizational procedure, we shall approach the decasyllable as we did the hexameter, from the perspective first of outer metric and then of inner metric, seeking in each case to establish both the lineage and the idiosyncratic form of the deseterac . Only when our grasp of the prosody is sure and unambiguous can we productively proceed to study of the phraseology with which it exists in symbiosis.^[59]

Outer Metric

The outer or podic structure of the heroic decasyllable seems at first sight more regular than that of the hexameter. While the Homeric line tolerates spondaic-dactylic substitution freely in the first four metra and grudgingly in the usually dactylic fifth metron, the Serbo-Croatian line seems always to conform to a pentameter scheme involving five two-syllable feet:^[60]

In addition to this five-part regularity, we observe a complementary consistency in a syllable count of ten, as the following examples illustrate:^[61]

Posle toga dva cifta pušaka
Behind him two paired rifles

Poce pisat' knjigu šarovitu
[He] began to write a multicolored letter

In these respects, the deseterac exhibits the quantitative basis and syllabicity characteristic of both the hexameter and its Indo-European precursor.

When we inquire about the disposition of these quantities in each of the five metra, however, the situation rapidly becomes more complicated and passes from the certainty of dependable rules to the uncertainty of irregularly observed tendencies. Jakobson (1952, 26) has argued that "the verse inclines toward a trochaic pentameter pattern," noting that the great majority of word-accents fall on the odd syllabic positions in the decasyllable. The model toward which he views the deseterac as tending is thus

Of course, absolute coincidence of lexical accent and verse ictus is not often observed in all five positions in the line. The guslar may bend individual lexical patterns to the recurrent and generalized influence of his rhythmic vocal and instrumental melody,^[62] and as Lord (1960, 37) observes, "there is a tension between the normal accent and the meter." Because we can actually listen to the Stolac songs (as we cannot do with dead-language texts), we know of other performance variables, such as the particular prominence of the ninth or penultimate syllable, but even without these firsthand observations it is plain that the putative trochaic pentameter pattern must remain a tendency, not a rule.

Other scholars who have considered the possibility of regular trochaic ictus include Svetozar Petrovic^[*] (1969) and Pavle Batinic^[*] (1975). Petrovic^[*] (1969, 183) examines selections from four of the most famous songs collected and published by the Serbian linguist-ethnographer Vuk Karadzic^[*] in the nineteenth century, setting his findings alongside Jakobson's figures for coincidence of word-accent and position (table 7).^[63] Throughout the five samples, the strongest correlation between lexical accent and position is at syllables 1 and 5, a fact that is in part explained by noting the prevalence of accented monosyllables in those positions^[64] and the regular onset of the two cola (1-4 and 5-10). After syllables 1 and 5 only positions 3 and 9 coincide with accent at all regularly, and these two are not much more prominent than some surrounding even-numbered positions. What syllables 3 and 9 do share, however—and this contributes to their relative importance from the point of view

of inner metric—is their penultimate spot in each of the cola. To put the matter another way, each precedes a closing syllable that shows a zero correlation with word-accent. As Petrovic^[*] indicates, position 7 has the weakest correlation of all odd—and supposedly ictus-bearing—syllables in the line, with text B actually suggesting a dactylic shape for syllables 5-7 and text C presenting a sequence (5:69, 6:40, 7:27) that seems unmetrical.

Also working strictly from the perspective of outer metric and on a sample of some 1,274 lines of mixed material,^[65] Batinic^[*] attempts to solve the rhythm of the deseterac by advocating attention not merely to stress-accent but also to two other properties of Serbo-Croatian lexical units: tone and quantity. Instead of assuming an exclusive correlation between accent and metrical position, he widens the search to include a survey of the three possible tones (rising, falling, and unmarked) and two possible quantities (long and short) in his characterization of syllables. The result, displayed in table 8 (from Batinic^[*] 1975, 102), is a description of various syllable-types in terms of their suitability for ictus, that is, of their likelihood of coinciding with an odd-numbered metrical position in the decasyllable. In Batinic's^[*] view, any syllable with two or more of these expressive features will almost certainly bear metrical ictus, those with either stress (word-accent) or quantitative length prove ambivalent and can occur in either odd- or even-numbered positions, and those lacking all three linguistic features will occupy the off-beats of the verse.

While this graded schedule of suitability for metrical ictus does provide us with a more exacting description of syllable distribution than is elsewhere available, it suffers both from the tautological assumption of binary feet as the sole and necessary metrical foundation of the deseterac and from the "catalog" mode of explication. To take the second objection first, note that more refined

description may better characterize whatever synchronic design one finds in a text or group of texts, but unless that description is not only pertinent to the observed data but also revelatory of the structures underlying those data, it cannot explain them. Trochaic pentameter models, however elaborated, do not completely explain the deseterac lines of Serbo-Croatian epic because they do not penetrate to the fundamental structures underlying the verse. A pentameter of binary feet may serve as a helpful first approximation of the decasyllable, but the lack of a uniform fit between syllable (whether characterized by one or three expressive features) and metrical position should warn against accepting that model out of hand. Like the hexameter, the deseterac also exhibits an inner metric, and, again like the hexameter, it is on this inner metric that traditional phraseology rests.

Before turning to the description of inner metric, it is well to establish the important outer metrical constraints on the deseterac as evidenced in the Stolac material used in these studies. In particular, I am interested in the consistency of syllabic count in these Parry Collection songs, and in the reasons behind any variance from the ten-syllable norm. To begin, let us separate out two distinct categories: oral-dictated and sung texts. The former group will be represented by three poems comprising a total of 4,077 lines: Texts A, Mujo Kukuruzovic's^[*]Ropstvo Ograscic^[*] Alije (The Captivity of Ograscic^[*] Alija ; no. 1287a, 1,288 lines); B, Kukuruzovic's^[*] Ropstvo Alagic^[*] Alije i izbavinje Turaka (The Captivity of Alagic^[*] Alija and the Rescue of the Turks ; no. 1868, 2, 152 lines); and D, Halil Bajgoric's^[*]Halil izbavi Bojicic^[*] Aliju (Halil Rescues Bojicic^[*] Alija ; no. 6703, 637 lines). Sung texts are represented by text (3, Bajgoric's^[*]Zenidba Becirbega^[*] Mustajbegova (The Wedding of Mustajbeg's Son Becirbeg^[*] ; no. 6699 , 1,030 lines). The raw figures and references for hypersyllabic and hyposyllabic verses in these four songs are as shown in table 9. In all, the oral-dictated texts (A, B, D) show only five hypermetric and seventeen hypometric lines out of 4,077 (0. 12 percent and 0.42 percent, respectively), while the sung text (C) contains twelve eleven- or twelve-syllable lines and six of less than ten syllables out of 1,030 lines (1.2 percent and 0.58 percent, respectively).

Clearly, then, analysis of our sample of over five thousand verses yields no substantial evidence for syllabic variation in the decasyllable, and we shall

discover that even this minuscule percentage of hyper- and hyposyllabic lines consists principally of verses that generally follow the syllabic rule. To put it positively, the junacki deseterac proves itself a highly consistent verse form from the point of view of syllabicity, with over 98 percent of our extensive sample unambiguously adhering to this first principle of outer metric. Even if we choose to leave the uncertain approximation of podic structure and trochaic rhythm aside, preferring to explain coincidence of phonological features and ictus through principles of inner metric, we can be sure of this much: in the songs that are in part the subject of these studies, the fundamental metrical measure of ten syllables is a precise and limiting feature of the line.

With this information in hand, we may profitably make two inquiries about the 1.8 percent of the sample that seems not to conform to the metrical rule of syllabicity. First, why do twelve of seventeen hypermetrics occur in the sung as opposed to the oral-dictated texts? Second, and more generally, to what kinds of "errors" do we owe the forty variations reported above? To begin with the sung text C, note that six of the twelve eleven-syllable lines owe their incongruity to initial extra-metrical syllables, in the form either of interjections:

or what I call "performatives":

The lines involving interjections arc typical at the beginning of songs, at the

resumption of a song following a rest break, and at moments of dramatic intensity. Because they have a rhetorical force in performance, interjections are more appropriate to sung than to dictated texts, and the Parry-Lord amanuensis Nikola Vujnovic^[*] was more likely to transcribe them than other kinds of variations from the decasyllabic norm. Indeed, it is well to remember that Nikola was himself a guslar and a member of the tradition he helped to record,^[66] so it is only prudent to be aware of the filter he provided between what was performed and what he either took down from dictation or transcribed from acoustic recordings in later years.

The "performatives" offer an avenue for inquiry into the nature of metrical "flaws." Although we may argue that the extra-metrical I (or hI , with the aspirate [h] customarily acting as a hiatus bridge between the tenth syllable of one line and the onset of the next line) represents the very common conjunction i , or "and," not every case will tolerate that interpretation syntactically (cf. Maretic^[*] 1935-36, 255: 10-16). In listening to the recording of Bajgoric's^[*] performance, it becomes apparent that the sound-image itself can vary from a fully pronounced i , at times arguably the conjunction, to the simple glide [j], ostensibly a hiatus bridge or continuant between lines. Its function seems on the whole to be phonological rather than syntactical; this is the reason that I have not felt it correct to "translate" the sound in the examples above. All in all, the concept of a performative—that is, a sound that promotes the phonological continuity of the performance without interceding in the syntax or meaning of the contiguous lines—seems closest to the true function of this sound. And we may assume that Nikola tacitly recognized these sounds for what they were, since he regularly left them untranscribed.

Of the remaining six hypermetrics in text C, two involve the insertion of an excrescent vowel, as in this example:

Nikola does not transcribe the aberration, resorting instead to the standard form, kalpak . At first sight the addition of a might seem idiolectal, as if some peculiarity of Bajgoric's^[*] performance style generated an occasional excrescent vowel. This supposition gains some support from the unusual assortment of hiatus bridges in Bajgoric's^[*] repertoire: [v], [j], [h], and even [m] and [n] can prevent glottal stops and the momentary interruption of vocal continuity both between and within the words.^[67] As a counter-example, we may compare

Ibro Basic's^[*] habit of doubling a stem vowel to eke out the ten-syllable norm of his verse.^[68] Whatever the case, the excrescent vowels are, like the extrametricals, phonological variants which do not affect the lexical or syntactic structure of the decasyllable.

Two or more eleven-syllable lines result from Bajgoric's^[*] using the longer of two dialectal forms when the shorter one would have suited the metrical environment:

In choosing the diminutive gunjinu instead of the simplex noun gunju , the singer exceeds the ten-syllabic norm; likewise, by selecting the four-syllable ijekavian dialect-form dijeliti instead of the three-syllable jekavian bi-form djeliti , he makes a hypermetric verse. While this choice amounts to a metrical error, it is only fitting to point out that it is also further evidence of the polymorphism of oral tradition, a characteristic found at all levels of structure. The doublet gunju /gunjinu —or, more generally, the simplex/diminutive substitution that can involve many nouns—is evidence of a compositional flexibility: the poet in performance can select either bi-form on the basis of syllabic count in the rest of the line. Of course, many of his "choices" have been made for him by the tradition that he inherits and in the formulas that he employs, and in any case he does not ponder the choice in performance but rather trusts his "ear" to produce a metrical verse. But the very fact that this kind of hyper-syllabicity can and does occur in the synchronic moment of performance proves a degree of flexibility at some points. The dijeliti /djeliti doublet reinforces the argument: perhaps under the influence of cognate formulas,^[69] Bajgoric^[*] uses the metrically "wrong" bi-form in combination with mejdane and produces an eleven-syllabic line. In both "errors" we detect an important compositional principle: although this sort of flexibility can occasionally lead to metrical infelicities, like other kinds of traditional polymorphism it serves the needs of the composing oral poet and makes possible over time the evolution of a traditional diction. The price one pays for that synchronic flexibility and

diachronic development is the relatively rare lapse exemplified by gunjinu and dijeliti .

The last two examples of hypersyllabicity in text C entail five-syllable first hemistichs:

More than the other examples cited, these two lines seem to be true hyper-metrics. Their extra length results from neither supernumerary elements nor an unfortunate choice, and all of the words involved have syntactic roles to play; in fact, in assigning the asterisk in each case to the third position, I have made a somewhat arbitrary decision about which is the "offending" syllable. On the other hand, all would have been well had Bajgoric^[*] elided sve vodaje to sv'odaje and te vuzdrz'oto t'uzdrz'o . As the lines stand, however, the hiatus bridge [v] precludes elision and memorializes the hypersyllabic construction. Without a thorough search of all of Bajgoric's^[*] sung repertoire and comparison with the Stolac community of singers,^[70] we cannot begin to describe how this formation came to be (that is, whether the aberration was frozen or caused by the hiatus bridge), and in the end the question may not be as important as noticing the deformation as it occurs in the text.

The twelve hypermetric verses that occur in the sung text C may thus be divided into four groups: (1) extra-metricals (interjections and performatives), (2) words lengthened one syllable by excrescent vowels, (3) faulty choices between metrical bi-forms, and (4) "true" hypermetrics caused by lack of elision. The first two categories, accounting for eight of the lines, may confidently be designated as purely phonological variations affecting neither the syntax nor the sense of the line. They are typical of sung performances and were not transcribed by the Parry-Lord amanuensis Nikola. The two instances in the third category derive from the same traditional polymorphism that makes possible multiforms at all levels of traditional epic; these infrequent errors are mere synchronic blemishes that fade into the background of the continually re-created diachronic text. The last pair of hypermetrics are thus the only lines that qualify as outright violations of the syllabic constraint in the deseterac .

Of the six eight- and nine-syllable hypometric lines in the same sung text,

four are attributable to missing connectives and temporal conjunctions that Bajgoric^[*] probably swallowed in the moment of performance. Nikola, demonstrating his singer's ear, fills the short lines out to the usual increment, fashioning common formulas that match the syntax (added elements are italicized in the following examples):

The other two hyposyllabic lines result from, in the case of line 854, an unfortunate elision: *Pa odigra cacina^[*] goluba to

—another example of multiformity gone awry; and in line 886, the transformation of the connective or performative i to a glide rather than a full morpheme: * I jovako momak progovara to

Nikola silently corrects these last two lines as well, causing them to conform to the usual deseterac syllabicity.^[72] The message of the hypometric lines is thus the same as that of the hypermetrics: aberrations are in the main phonological mishaps that stem from the exigencies of composition in performance; the syllabic constraint on the deseterac proves once again a very strict and important one.

The few lines that vary from the standard ten syllables in the oral-dictated texts, a total of only twenty-two out of 4,077 lines (0.5 percent), stem from the same kinds of causes as underlie those in the sung text C, with the expectable exception that we find no hypermetrics or performatives in the dictated texts. Excrescent vowels, faulty selection of metrical bi-forms, and

problems with elision all contribute to long and short lines,^[73] but once again the overwhelming impression is of a highly syllabic verse form—a line that varies from its ten-syllable shape only in the moment of performance, and then only very infrequently. With over 98 percent of our sample answering the syllabic constraint, and, further, with virtually all those rare departures from the norm explained as momentary ornaments or errors, it is safe to pronounce syllabicity a constant and rigorous rule in the deseterac . To pursue other regularities in the line, we must turn to its inner metric.

Inner Metric

Caesura

All commentators on the deseterac add to the decasyllabic constraint a regularly recurring caesura between the fourth and fifth syllables, yielding two cola of four and six syllables each:

As this example illustrates, no matter what the syntactic form of the line, the word-break will come at precisely the same place in each decasyllable.^[74] In fact, even when a line is hypermetric or hypometric, one or both of the two cola will be preserved, as in the following instances discussed above:

From a practical standpoint, the caesura is never bridged in the deseterac . Caesura placement and colon formation are constant throughout the sample of more than five thousand lines and show even greater stability, as these two lines help to prove, than syllabicity.

Before moving on to describe the nature of each colon or hemistich, let us make two related theoretical points. First, it will be recalled that the Homeric hexameter exhibited three caesuras, a highly regular mid-line break at two possible positions (B1 and B2, 99 percent) and two somewhat less frequent breaks within the half-line, each of which could also occur at either of two

positions (A1 and A2, 90 percent; C1 and C2, 90 percent). Only by allowing two slots for each caesura do we attain such high percentages, but this controlled variation is to be expected in a verse form in which dactylic-spondaic substitution affects metrical shape so strongly. The point is that the hexameter has three movable caesuras and a correspondingly complex assortment of colon-types; the deseterac , in contrast, with its more focused syllabicity and the absolutely regular placement of its single caesura, has only two possible colon-types: the four- and six-syllable increments that together constitute a whole stich. Given this idiosyncratic situation (both traditions exhibit colon formation but the repertoire of types in Serbo-Croatian epic is far less elaborate), it behooves us to consider the patterns within the four- and six-syllable increments, for within the remarkable regularity of syllable count, caesura, and colon formation, the deseterac allows and even promotes a complicated display of traditional word-craft.

At the foundation of the singer's art, from both an evolutionary and a performance-oriented standpoint, lies the Indo-European principle of right justification. Much as in the hexameter, this increasing metrical (and therefore phraseological) conservatism as the line progresses from the beginning of a unit toward the end governs the shape of prosody and diction. But just as the rule took a tradition-dependent form in the hexameter—one resulting, for example, in varying hemistich and colon lengths—so it takes another series of forms in the deseterac . Indeed, right justification emerges as the principle behind the idiosyncratic texture of both cola, each with its own appreciable collection of individual features. We can trace the synchronic designs created by this diachronic pattern in the textual record of the Stolac songs.

Colon 2 and The Shape of The verse

Perhaps the most obvious evidence of right justification is the asymmetry of the decasyllable. As in the hexameter, the second hemistich is longer than the first, leading to a correspondingly greater metrical and phraseological stability in the latter part of the line. As a first approximation, we may recall Jakobson's (1952, 25) demonstration of the "quantitative close" over the last four syllables of the deseterac : "An accented short is avoided in the penult (ninth) syllable, and an accented long practically never occurs in the two antepenults (eighth and seventh syllables)." Schematically, then, the close follows this sequence:

The quantitative close thus governs the placement of words to some extent,

especially by inviting a long syllable in position 9, far the heaviest stress in the deseterac . So strong is this penultimate ictus that the poet composing in performance will often stress a lexically short syllable in the ninth position, in which case metrical ictus momentarily outweighs the rules of accent.^[75] The singer's rhythm and vocal melody emphasize the quantitative close, and the demands of performance override uncontextualized lexical values. The quantitative close and its focus on the ninth-syllable ictus are important features of the deseterac , and they offer one example of the operation of right justification in the prosody and its constraints on verse-making in the decasyllable.

Just as the longer second colon becomes firmer in its distribution of quantities toward the end of the unit, so the shorter first colon also reveals a looser-to-firmer progression of quantities from beginning to end. Although the effect of right justification is, logically enough, less pronounced in the shorter hemistich, we still observe the heaviest performance stress on the third syllable,^[76] followed by a complete lack of ictus on syllable 4. All in all, the close of the first hemistich is to an extent a mirror of line closure, with syllables 3-4 and 9-10 serving as boundaries:

We may now correlate these observations with Petrovic's^[*] figures on coincidence of lexical accent and metrical position, and note that the stress on syllables in positions 3 and 9 stems not necessarily from a trochaic pentameter tendency but from the Indo-European rule of right justification as imaged in the tradition-dependent Serbo-Croatian deseterac . Absolutely consistently in the rhythm and melody of sung performance (Lord 1960, 37-38), and with reasonable regularity in the verbal component regulated by the prosody (see Petrovic^[*] figures above, p. 87), the third and ninth syllables bear the strongest performance stress of any positions in the line, while stress is forbidden in the fourth and tenth syllables. We may thus consider each colon, as well as the entire line, to have a recurrent closing cadence of long-short and stressed-unstressed.^[77]

Corresponding to these dosing cadences, and in accord with the demands of

right justification, we find a looser distribution of quantities at the opening of each colon. These beginnings of units provide for rhythmic (and phraseological) variation, and for this as well as additional reasons to be discussed later in this chapter, the first and fifth syllables are thus the primary sites for stressed monosyllables. We may recall, for instance, that Petrovic's^[*] figures reveal the highest coincidence of word-accent and position at syllables t and 5. For the moment, it is enough to remark that the third and ninth syllables do not usually harbor these monosyllables because to do so would violate the bridges at 3-4 and 9-10.^[78] Schematically, then, we expect the configuration

Likewise, any initially accented word beginning either of the two cola will bear metrical ictus in positions 1 and 5. When we add to these lexical considerations the tendency of the guslar's metrical stress to fall at the onset of units in the deseterac , the following overall pattern emerges:

That is, there exist four primary sites for ictus, both in the prosody and in the phraseology that it helps to determine: positions 1, 3, 5, and 9. Taken as a group, all four sites are important to deseterac prosody and, as we shall see, affect phraseology in significant ways; all four also derive from the fundamental principle of right justification.

Before moving on to examine some specific instances of these general rules and to promote further articulation of the rough sketch that they assist in providing, we should consider what remains after these six positions, four stressed and two unstressed, are described. It may come as no surprise that the second syllable, for instance, shows no strong tendency toward a particular prosodic value. Syllables 6 through 8 reveal a similar ambiguity, as Petrovic^[*] reminded us and as Jakobson in defining his quantitative close in part illustrated. These four positions are not specifically defined in the deseterac ; to put the same matter another way, they allow for variation much more readily than do the six syllabic positions at either end of the two cola.

Perhaps we can now see how the hypothesis of a trochaic pentameter came to be, and also how oblique such a concept is to the true nature of the verse

form. With stress and length tending to fall on syllables 1, 3, 5, and 9, and with off-beats and shortness coinciding absolutely regularly with 4 and 10, metrists were almost able to fit the deseterac into a Greco-Latin quantitative mold. If positions 2, 6, 8, and particularly 7 did not agree with the classical model, the "aberrations" at these points could be explained away by terming the rhythmic pattern a tendency instead of a rule. In fact, the notion of trochaic pentameter obscures the quantitative shape of the decasyllable, designating as it does a line of five stressed-unstressed doublets. The deseterac consists of ten syllables, to be sure, but they are divided asymmetrically into two cola of four and six syllables each, with each colon characterized by stress placement at particular positions. Right justification has provided each hemistich with a closing cadence, and an initial stress has likewise emerged in the relatively loose sequence of quantities that begins each unit. Greco-Roman models aside, the deseterac takes its own tradition-dependent form.

In addition to the closing cadence and initial stress in each hemistich, right justification provides the second colon with two complementary distribution rules. The first entails the sequence of words according to their syllabic length and prescribes that longer words follow shorter ones, the more extensive words characteristically appearing at the ends of cola and lines.^[79] The second and interdependent rule calls for initially accented disyllables, of the shape s^[*] s^[*] , to seek the ninth and tenth positions;^[80] this sorting, which answers both the penultimate ictus and zeugrna requirements, can, but does not necessarily, override the first distribution rule. To illustrate, consider these examples of the shorter-before-longer constraint in colon 2:

As long as the disyllable has an initial short vowel, the first rule is the arbiter of placement in the longer hemistich. When a disyllable with a long stem

vowel is involved, however, the shorter-longer order may be reversed under the influence of the ninth syllable and closing cadence.

It is precisely the firmness of the colon- and line-ending cadence that attracts the initially accented disyllable and causes the 4 + 2 distribution. Both the "normal" shorter-longer order and the reversal as a result of the attraction of ninth-syllable ictus are tradition-dependent realizations of the principle of right justification.

To restate this pair of distribution rules in properly ordered sequence, we can say that in the second hemistich a syllabically longer word will always follow a syllabically shorter word unless the shorter word is an initially accented disyllable, in which case the order may be (but is not always) reversed. Instances of non-reversal do occur:

—so it will prove most accurate to conceive of the ninth-syllable exclusion as a possible rather than certain reversal of the customary order. A corollary to these two rules will further illustrate their interdependence and solve the problem of sequence with syllabically equal words. If two three-syllable words constitute the second colon, leaving nothing to choose between them on the basis of extent alone, then the one with an accented medial syllable will be favored in final position:

The penultimate ictus in the deseterac attracts the medially accented trisyllable,^[81] just as it does the initially stressed disyllable:

This combination of distribution rules, both deriving from right justification in the inner metric of the deseterac , yields for our 5,107-line sample the frequencies of principal metrical types in the second colon shown in table 10.^[82] As a generalization, we can say that shorter-longer sequence is preferred in the second hemistich of the decasyllable, with approximately an equal number of ninth-syllable reversals and symmetrical (3/3) cola. These distributional rules override normal prose word order when the two come into conflict, although in many cases there is no conflict and customary word order is maintained.^[83] The major point is that the inner metric of colon 2 reveals a texture ultimately attributable to right justification but also amounts to a tradition-dependent set of constraints.

This characteristic texture becomes ever more apparent as we examine the distribution of elements in colon 2 more finely. Proclitics, such as prepositions, the conjunctions i (and), a (and, but), and ni (neither, nor), and the negative particle ne , are unaccented and cannot be treated metrically or grammatically as single words. From a prosodic viewpoint, a proclitic joins with the word that follows to form an accented unit within the colon and line. Thus the following examples of two-element second hemistichs:

In the syllabically more spacious second colon this proclitic binding , as I shall call it, participates most often in noun doublets, noun-adjective pairs, longer (often prefixed) verbs, and prepositional phrases. Since the two-word units formed by this process of amalgamation are metrically equivalent to one-

element units of the same syllabic extent, we may include the proclitic (p ) groups with their single-word counterparts in the order shown in table II.^[84] It is worth noting that the proclitic pattern plays a particularly significant role in both the 4 + 2 and the 3 + 3 configurations, accounting in each case for up to half of the examples located, and further that these three sequences taken together make up approximately 80 percent of all second hemistichs in the 5,107-line sample.^[85]

After these major colon-patterns are recognized, the remainder of our sample breaks down into sparsely populated and for the most part statistically unimportant categories. The only category worth tabulating here is that involving three two-syllable words (2/2/2), a sequence that follows the expectable rule of initially accented disyllables in final position and in which the pattern distribution is reasonably consistent.^[86]

Likewise, enclitic binding , by which an unaccented word "inclines" on a preceding accented word to form a grammatical and prosodic group, proves statistically insignificant, not sufficiently affecting any one pattern to merit categorical analysis. Of descriptive importance, however, arc the facts that these accentless elements (1) usually follow the word order of the spoken language, (2) almost never occupy the fifth position (at the beginning of the second hemistich), since this placement would amount to a bridged caesura, and (3) are much rarer in the second than in the first colon.^[87] Whereas the

process of proclitic binding, the joining of an unaccented word to what follows it, plays a relatively important role in pattern distribution throughout the line, that of enclitic binding is primarily confined to the first hemistich.

Colon 1

In general, the role played by proclitic and enclitic binding reflects the relative lack of prosodic and phraseological fixity of the first as opposed to the second colon. Partly because its brevity precludes setting up regular sequences of nouns and noun-adjective combinations, the opening hemistich reveals a much higher degree of pliability, both in its accommodation of unaccented words and in the large number of lightly populated categories or sequences of elements. This flexibility is a typical manifestation of fight justification in the line as a whole, the first hemistich being more loosely organized than the second. At the level of the colon, we may expect the first four-syllable unit to manifest some evidence of greater firmness or regularity toward its end, much as the six-syllable segment showed above. And in fact, the prominence of the first- and third-syllable ictus is, as mentioned earlier, a sign of right justification.

As an initial approximation of the most important patterns, consider the distribution of the three most frequently occurring (table 12).^[88]

The most common pattern is a balanced one of two disyllables which follows the penultimate ictus rule in its internal arrangement (svlaci ), while the second and third both consist of what Maretic^[*] calls neprave cetvorosloznice , "facsimile tetrasyllables," formed by two words, one of which is unaccented. Neither of these accentual groups owes its formation to right justification, either by the shorter-before-longer or the penultimate ictus constraints that proved so important in the second hemistich. On the basis of these most heavily represented categories, then, we derive very little evidence of right justification apart from the tendency toward penultimate ictus and the very variability of inner metric patterns.

It is important to notice from the start that this flexibility promotes two different but complementary trends in colon formation. The more obvious one will amount to a synchronic freedom for the composing poet, affording him a section of the line that will remain open, for example, to syntactic adjustments.^[89] This is not to say that formulaic structure will weaken or lapse at line-beginning, but, in terms widely used in current scholarship, that verbal repetition is likely to be more systemic than verbatim. The less obvious result of first-colon variability, a corollary to the former trend, will be greater differences in prosodic structures from one text to another and from one singer to another. If this initial section of the line is more open to individual or idiolectal habits of composition, in opposition to the greater regularity of the second-colon inner metric as imaged in its dependence on a few well-represented patterns, then the first hemistich must also prove the site for a degree of prosodic chauvinism. We see some evidence of this latter trend toward individual habits of composition in the figure for the 2/2 balanced pattern over the four texts.^[90] With the first colon revealing a greater degree of flexibility, we expect and indeed find a correspondingly greater degree of individuality in prosodic structures. As an example of this individuality, consider table 13, which displays word-types that begin the first hemistich. Some of the percentages most divergent from the averages, notably occurring only in texts C and D, are italicized.

Summary: The Deseterac

In gathering together our findings and observations on the decasyllable, it is well to recognize the tenuous nature of outer metric as a true, definitive aspect

of the prosody. At best, the putative podic structure of the deseterac remains a descriptive approximation, much as the six-metron model formally characterized the hexameter. But whereas the Homeric line responded in a limited fashion to this approach by yielding a profile of dactylic-spondaic substitution, the decasyllable reveals no such clearly defined podic units. Scholars have labored to impose on the Serbo-Croatian line a regularity at the structural level of the Greco-Latin foot, but the verse resists all such attempts, forcing a retreat to unconvincing portraits of trochaic pentameter tendencies and the like. What remains after a fair examination of outer metric in the deseterac is a firm and unambiguous constraint of syllabic count, a constraint that makes the line absolutely regular syllabically, with all but a very few hyper-metric and hypometric lines demonstrably the product of phonological ornamentation and traditional "error." And, as we have seen, these apparent exceptions actually prove the ten-syllable rule rather than bringing its consistency into question.

The same exceptions, when added to the overwhelming regularity throughout the 5, 107-line sample, assist also in proving the systematic recurrence of the caesura or word-break between syllables 4 and 5. This key to the inner metric of the deseterac thus combines with the equally stringent syllabicity rule to mirror the two corresponding principles first found in the reconstructed Indo-European line and also reflected faithfully in the Homeric hexameter. The caesura divides the decasyllable into two hemistichs or cola, the first of four and the second of six syllables, and their regularity as units derives directly from the demonstrated consistencies in syllabic extent and word-break placement. As already mentioned, the deseterac thus involves an externally simpler system of cola than does the hexameter, since the Homeric line divides first into two hemistichs and then into four cola by means of multiple A, B, and C caesuras, although the cola of the decasyllable are, as we have seen, correspondingly complex in their inner make-up. We should note in passing that this examination of the Greek and Serbo-Croatian colon formation typifies the kind of comparison-contrast advocated throughout these studies: the two verses are alike in prescribing regularly recurring intralinear

units that give each prosody a particular texture, and each is distinctive in prescribing certain tradition-dependent characteristics of that texture.

As for the third Indo-European and ancient Greek principle, that of fight justification, the grossest evidence for a trace of its operation in the deseterac consists of the very 4 + 6, shorter-before-longer make-up of the composite line. Even more important for our view of the verse form as the foundation of a traditional diction is the contribution of right justification to the placement of ictus. As shown in detail above, each colon, and particularly the second, maintains a penultimate ictus (on syllables 3 and 9) and an initial ictus (on syllables 1 and 5) that derive from the smaller-to-larger, looser-to-firmer patterns of the line as a whole and of each hemistich individually. With lotus on all odd syllables except the seventh, the assumption of a trochaic pentameter—a podic, outer metric structure familiar to metrists intent on viewing the decasyllable in the canonical Greco-Latin context—seems outwardly logical, but in fact it proves diachronically and dynamically impertinent. Viewed on its own terms, the seventh-syllable ambiguity is not a troublesome flaw in the otherwise straightforwardly trochaic base of the line, but rather a syllable position left unemphasized by the relative distribution of ictus in neighboring positions. In the Serbo-Croatian line, right justification prescribes two cola in an asymmetrical arrangement, the shorter preceding the longer, and further provides for recurrent prosodic ictus on syllables 1, 3, 5, and 9 while forbidding ictus at positions 4 and 10.

Within the second and more extensive hemistich, the same archaic principle finds expression in two complementary distribution rules: (1) syllabically shorter words before longer and (2) initially accented disyllables at positions 9-10, which comprise the conclusion of the ending cadence and collectively constitute a zeugma or bridge. That is, shorter words will precede longer words unless the shorter element is an initially accented disyllable, in which case the disyllable may (or may not) seek the line-ending zeugma by virtue of the coincidence between its lexical accent and the penultimate ictus, thus reversing the more usual order and leaving the syllabically longer element in first position. Although the second hemistich might seem to present greater opportunities for variety in internal design than the less spacious opening hemistich, in fact the longer unit shows itself more conservative prosodically: fully 80 percent of the Stolac sample falls into one of three major colon-patterns—2 + 4, 3 + 3, and 4 + 2—with proclitic binding tending to work toward one of these.

Colon 1, in contrast, utilizes both proclitic and enclitic binding in its general tendency to make larger prosodic elements out of shorter ones. This part of the line is characterized by its relative variability, just as were the first and third cola of the hexameter, with that diachronic flexibility providing a site for synchronic fashioning of the verse in a particular textual situation. Under such conditions we would not expect major colon-patterns to emerge, and

indeed the assortment of observed sequences is made up largely of a great many statistically insignificant categories. But right justification takes shape in more than the shorter-before-longer, highly variable nature of the unit as a whole; we also observe a marked preference for shorter elements (monosyllables, disyllables, and unaccented monosyllabic proclitics) at the onset of the initial hemistich. Even when a trisyllable opens the first colon, it almost always gives way to an enclitic in position 4 and so forms a prosodic tetra-syllable. Within an overall flexibility, then, we do perceive some manifestations of right justification, although they are by no means as pronounced as in the more conservative second hemistich.

Overall, the deseterac takes its prosodic cue from the Indo-European (and Homeric) features of syllabicity, caesura (implying colon formation), and fight justification. As a general observation, then, we might logically expect the two epic prosodies—having at least this much in common as well as a respectable number of disparities—to support comparable phraseologies, that is, poetic dictions that will reveal significant similarities alongside inevitable, tradition-dependent differences. In the history of the evolution of Oral Theory, moreover, this is precisely the Hellenic-Slavic linguistic combination out of which Parry and Lord first forged both the methodology and the interpretive theory that were to serve so many other traditions. Whether the ancient Greek-South Slavic synthesis can be called on to bear such a comparative burden without the aid of other comparanda is a vexed question, as is that concerning the role to be played by other poetic traditions. Let us begin an informed and meticulous answer to both questions by asking how the prosodic descriptions so far developed relate to the prosody of the Old English Beowulf .