Regilaul: Clearing the alliterative haze

Abstract

By the phrase "alliterative haze" I mean the obscuring, changing, and extending of the conventional denotation of words when they are placed in alliterating combinations. Below, I shall attempt to show how the special way of expression characteristic to parallel constructions in regilaulud (runo songs) disperses the imprecise haze of meaning that alliteration can give rise to. Furthermore, I shall observe how the meaning of words is transferred by means of alliteration and parallelism working in co-effect, and in the final part of the article I shall provide the numerical characteristics of their occurrence in the regilaulud of various regions. 1 1.We can take as a common principle for the study of poetics that different devices should be observed in co-influence. The main devices used in the regilaul (the typical metre, alliteration, parallelism and language usage regularly deviating from the colloquial) have mostly, thus far, been studied separately. A system of poetics that might be applied to regilaul is in some ways quite determined, and it should be observed as a result of a combination of its components. We might assume that one of the reasons for the long-term steadiness of Kalevala-metre folksong is a result of the combined functioning of the means of poetical system.In regilaulud and laments the denotations words and groups of words have in ordinary language often either do not apply, or change in the contexts of alliterative and parallel constructions (e.g. adjectives can lose their specific meanings -see: Leino 1974: 121, Saarlo 1996; parallel verses can be contradictory -see: Kaplinski 1997: 207 ff., Metslang 1981: 52). Above peculiarities are not, however, abnormal, but follow rather traditional and regular poetical conventions, and, apparently, have not caused misunderstanding among the users of regilaulud. So the issues we face here are how the structure of meaning of regilaulud differs from

The Finnic Tetrameter – A Creolization of Poetic Form?

“…In Old English and Old Norse, kennings are frequently used in so-called apposition, a type of semantic parallelism in which a kenning fills a hemistich, accomplishing alliteration, while it repeats a semantic unit of a noun in the preceding hemistich or verse (Hopkins 2020; also Frog with Tarkka 2017: 207). Apposition as such is not relevant in the Finnic tetrameter, although it might be compared to how semantic parallelism commonly elides semantic elements from the preceding verse (Saarinen 2017) and how parallel verses exhibit a greater tendency to have alliteration than main verses (Sarv 1999). rhythm that was displaced during language change. However, it is compatible with Korhonen's views on the significance of prosodic changes in the language from Middle to Late Proto-Finnic.…”

Towards a Typology of Parallelism in Estonian Poetic Folklore

“…In the case of Finnic runosong tradition as well as other poetic genres many researchers have noted that parallelism with its specific semantic structure widens the possibilities for the use of alliteration (see, e.g., Leino 1974: 125;Laugaste 1969: 24;Honko 1963: 103-104;Metslang 1978;Sarv 1999Sarv , 2000. The co-dependence of alliteration and parallelism could be statistically proven (Sarv 1999(Sarv , 2002 by comparing the percentage of alliterative words, which was remarkably higher in the lines belonging to the parallel sequences than in single, so-called orphan lines (cf. also Saarinen 2014).…”

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“…making collections available and accessible for other researchers, as well as for the public). 1 My studies on runosong parallelism (Sarv 1999(Sarv , 2000(Sarv , 2001(Sarv , 2002(Sarv , 2015 have led me to the conclusion that, in addition to the formal description of the parallel units, specific semantic relations of the constituents of these parallel units are crucial to characterizing the main form of runosong parallelism. My further studies on the structural preconditions for the euphony in short forms of folklore (Sarv 2003) have allowed me to discern two more types of parallelism on a similar basis.…”