Towards a Typology of Parallelism in Estonian Poetic Folklore

Abstract

Abstract:The article gives an overview of the uses and features of parallelism across different genres of Estonian poetic folklore, focusing on the genres in which grammatical parallelism forms an important means for structuring texts. Relying on her own previous research on runosongs and short forms of folklore (Sarv 1999(Sarv , 2000(Sarv , 2003, the results of the syntactic analysis of runosong texts in Helle Metslang's dissertation (1978), Juhan Peegel's definition of poetical synonyms in runosongs (Peegel 2004), and proceeding from the concept of poetical system (Sarv 2000), the author proposes a definition of the type of parallelism canonical in the Finnic runosong tradition. Two other types of parallelism, used in different genres of Estonian poetic folklore, are discerned on a similar basis, taking into account the relations between the elements of the poetical system. The proposed typology proceeds from the assumption that the regular use (or absence) of euphonic means is related to the type of parallelism used. In this case -as the study proves -the types of parallelism are distinguished by the semantic relations between the parallel elements (words or phrases) in grammatically parallel units, rather than by semantic relations between the whole parallel units or by formal features like range or length. There appears to be a clear tendency: the use of euphony (alliteration and word-structure repetitions) in parallelism types increases in relation to the diminishing of the semantic load of the parallel elements.

Rhyme and Rhyming in Verbal Art, Language, and Song

“…(On oral Kalevala-meter, see e.g., Sarv 2015; It is usually said that the Kalevala-meter has no rhyme or does not build on rhyme, but the parallelism (e.g., repeating the content of a line in subsequent lines with new wordings) o en creates irregular sections of morphological or grammatical rhyme, as the Finnic languages are rich in morphological variation at the word endings, and the parallel verses o en make use of similar morphological forms. (On parallelism in Kalevala-meter, see Oras 2010;Sarv 2017;Frog & Tarkka 2017;Kallio 2017a.) Yet, the irregular end rhyme relating to parallelism is evidently one aesthetic component of the meter.…”

An Analysis of Types and Functions of Parallelism in Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible

“…Several previous studies [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] have suggested that parallelism can be divided into three types, or species according to Lowth's term, with reference to the division made by Robert Lowth [12], namely synonymous parallelism, antithetic parallelism, and synthetic parallelism. The three types of parallelism are briefly explained as follows:…”

Echoing Ideas in Discourse on Poetics: From Lowth's parallelismus membrorum to Porthan's rhythmus sensus

“…When considering the works of Cajanus and Juslenius, their comparisons may seem like an outgrowth of discussions of biblical parallelism. However, in 4 An exception is Mari Sarv (2017), who recently reframed the background of Porthan's term for parallelism on the basis of De poësi Fennica rather than Steinitz's review (cf. also Frog with Tarkka 2017, 215;Frog 2017, 426n7).…”