Annotation 4: Syllables and Meter

Annotation only available in ANNIS. For the TXM version, see section 4 below.

1. Verse and prose

The OGR corpus contains both verse and prose texts. While all texts contain syllables (and, to an extent, lines) metrical annotation is only found in syllabic verse texts.

The OGR corpus is available in two versions:

• ogr: standard version with all texts but without extra metrical annotation for verse.
• ogrsv (OGR syllabic verse): syllabic verse texts only with extra metrical annotation.

2. Annotation available in all texts

2.1 Syllables

Syllables (syll) are sequences of Segments. They are further subdivided into Onset, Nucleus and Coda. This subdivision is given by the onc annotation, which has the values O, N or C.

• syll_lstress: indicates whether the syllable bears a lexical stress. The primary stressed syllable in a polysyllable and monosyllabic prosodic words are both tagged y (yes); all other syllables are tagged n (no).

2.2 Lines

Lines (line) are sequences both of Words and Segments and have two primary roles in the OGR:

• In verse texts, a Line always corresponds to a line of verse.
• In all texts, the line_ref annotation contains a citable reference to the text. In verse texts it indicates the line of verse; in prose texts the page, column, and manuscript line. Words broken across two lines in the manuscript are fully included within the Line in which they begin.

3. Metrical annotation in OGRSV

In the OGRSV corpus, the lines of verse are scanned. Syllables are annotated according to their metrical position and Lines are annotated according to number of syllables and the nature of the cesura and the rhyme. Additionally, a tree-based representation of the metrical structure is available.

3.1 syll_metpos

A five-character string giving the metrical position of the syllable in the line.

• characters 1 and 2: metrical position counting from left to right, e.g. 01, 02, … 10. Elided or uncounted syllables are annotated --.
• characters 3 and 4: metrical position counting from right to left, e.g. 10, 09, … 01. Elided or uncounted syllables are annotated --.
• character 5: indicates if the syllable is at the cæsura (c) or the rhyme (r), or neither (-). Note that the c and r annotations are found both on the tonic and on any following uncounted syllables.

With a simple regex, syll_metpos can easily be used to find key syllables in the line, e.g.

• tonic syllable at the rhyme: syll_metpos=/..01r/
• first syllable of an octosyllabic line: syll_metpos=/0108./
• elided/uncounted syllable: syll_metpos=/----./
• elided syllable after the cæsura: syll_metpos="----c"

3.2 line_met

A five-character string summarizing the key metrical properties of the line.

• characters 1 and 2: Number of syllables in the scanned line, e.g. 08, 10. If the line is irregular and could not be scanned, this will give the actual number of syllables in the line rather than the target length.
• character 3: nature of the rhyme: __m__asculine, __f__eminine, or - for irregular lines.
• character 4: nature of the cæsura: __n__ormal (stress, word boundary), __e__pic (stress, uncounted post-tonic syllables), __l__yric (no stress, word boundary), or - for irregular lines.
• character 5: cæsura position, e.g. 4, or - for irregular lines. Note that the scanner only checks for cæsura in standard positions, so for a decasyllable the cæsura will be either 4 or -.

line_met can be queried with a simple regex, e.g.:

• decasyllable with epic cæsura: line_met=/10.e./
• octosyllable with feminine rhyme: line_met=/08f../

There is also a line_correct tag, with values True if the line could be scanned and False if not.

3.3 The metrical tree

The OGRSV corpus contains an alternative tree visualization of the metrical structure which can be queried like a syntax tree using hierarchical operators (>, >*, etc.). In addition to the Line, Syllable, ONC, and Segment layers, the tree also contains a halfline and an extra subdivision of the syllable into Onset and Rhyme. The units in the tree can be queried using the following cat properties:

• cat="line": a line
• cat="hl": a halfline/hemistich
• cat="sy": a counted syllable
• cat="el": an elided syllable
• cat="On": a syllable onset (Onset–Rhyme layer)
• cat="Rhy": syllable rhyme
• cat="O": syllable onset
• cat="N": syllable nucleus
• cat="C": syllable coda

4. The TXM version

A reduced form of this annotation is given in word-level tags in the TXM version.

4.1. ref

ref gives a citable reference for each word in the text (cf. line_ref above). It appears by default in the left-hand column of the concordance.

4.2 syllabified

A string representing the syllabification of the word. Segments are transcribed using the phonemic symbol (see Segment-level annotation). For example, in the string ʤ/y\S.'t/i\.z/(ə)\:

• the dot . separates syllables;
• the fore- and backslashes /...\ delimit the nucleus;
• the straight single quote ' before a syllable denotes primary stress.

Additional markup, such as the parentheses around the nucleus (...), exist to provide information to the scansion algorithm: in this case, that the vowel is elidable.

4.3 prosody

A three-character string representing the prosody of the word.

• The first character is the number of syllables.
• The final two characters give the stress pattern, which is either:
  • cl: a clitic
  • ox: an oxytone, i.e. stressed on the final syllable
  • po: a paroxytone, i.e. stressed on the penultimate syllable
  • pp: a proparoxytone, i.e. stressed on the antepenultimate syllable

For example for parler prosody="2ox" (a two-syllable oxytone), for femme prosody="2po" (a two-syllable paroxytone) and for le prosody="1cl" (a monosyllabic clitic).

4.4 line_met

See section 3.2 above.

4.5 metpos and soptem

A string representing the metrical position of all the syllables in the word. The principle is similar to syll_metpos but applied to the whole word.

• The metrical position of each syllable is represented by two digits
  • metpos counts forwards from the start of the line, soptem backwards from the end of the line.
• Different metrical positions are separated by dots
• The final character of the string is either r (rhyme), c (caesura) or - (neither)

For example, the word ancienur (Alexis, l. 1) occupies the last four metrical positions of a decasyllabic line. It therefore has metpos="07.08.09.10.r" and soptem="04.03.02.01.r.

Tip: soptem is metpos backwards, to help remember which is which!