A Template for the Serbo-Croatian Epic Decasyllable
Résumé
The serbo-croatian traditional epic verse had the chance to survive in folk poetry until the middle of the 20th century. Many scholars worked extensively on this tradition, recorded the guslari, and left us primitive data as well as empirical analysis. As a consequence, the traditional serbo-croatian decasyllable is one of the best documented folk metrical traditions from the 20th century.
Departing from these empirical data and analyses, this paper proposes a template for this meter. A binary structure opposing a weak colon to a strong colon, and weak feet to strong feet is supposed. Together with its correspondence rules, this template succeeds to explain the alignment of clitic groups with the meter, the caesura and the bridges, the trochaic structure of feet, and justifies the quantitative properties of syllables 7, 8 and 9.
The eventual musical aspects of this oral tradition are not examined.
The theoretical background of this paper is generative metrics. A metrical ability independent from language is assumed.