205
both Dutch and French, while the northern
ones, despite knowing French, could not be
considered bilingual per se. The relevance of
this observation lies in the accessibility of the
French structure among the two groups of
Dutch poets. Clearly, both groups were fluent
enough to understand and try to imitate French
poetry. But only the southern group could have
full insight into its functionality. This
difference led to a significant distinction in the
initial phase of iambic meter versification: on
the one hand, in the south, cases of
isosyllabism in the French manner were
attested, which consisted of lines with a fixed
number of syllables yet with a very free
disposition of stresses and an alternation of
iambic and anapestic feet (Gasparov 1996:
193; Zonneveld 1998: 206); on the other hand,
these instances do not seem to be attested in the
north.
The exposure to the prestigious French and
Italian Renaissance works led, along with the
new meter, to the entrance of many lexical
borrowings. As observed above, such an influx
of foreign lexical items is expected to have an
effect on the structure of the recipient
language. Interestingly, a parallel situation was
attested in English poetry, which, during its
Renaissance phase, incorporated a large
amount of French lexical elements. According
to Halle and Keyser (1971) and Duffell (2010),
it was in fact the great influx of loanwords that,
by causing a change in English stress rules,
facilitated the spread of iambic meter. To
explain, the English stress system underwent a
change due to a large number of loanwords
from French, a change which consisted of a
stressed rule for Romance items becoming part
of the stress system.
The change in the general
stress rule enhanced the potential for English
to accommodate iambic foot.
This research project’s goal is to investigate
the influence of loanwords through two
different perspectives. The first perspective
considers the role of lexical borrowings in the
language as a system. In other words, it focuses
on changes, mainly stress-related, that were
caused by the large influx of Romance words
into the Dutch lexicon. The starting point is the
assumption that an account similar to the one
that Halle and Keyser (1971) and Duffell
(2010) made regarding stress changes in
English can also be made for Dutch. A study
of the Romance lexical borrowings attested in
a large corpus of Dutch poetry and an analysis
of their influence on Dutch language stress will
reveal significant insights on how the language
changed during that period. In a more general
view, it will contribute to
the understanding of
how language and stress can change under an
extensive contact with another language.
The second perspective focuses on
differences between the groups of Dutch poets.
As observed before, the division is based on
the geographical origin of the poets. The two
groups reveal two different approaches to
French poetry, namely an initial attempt at
isosyllabism versus an immediate foot-based
approach. A corpus analysis of the two groups
and of their different phases is forthcoming. A
comparative analysis of the two groups in
relation to the Romance source will also be
considered. The observation of the possibilities
of deviation from the iambic pattern in the
different phases and within the two groups
leads to the elaboration
of a diachronic picture
of the process. Moreover, the comparative
analysis of the two groups gives a more
complete understanding of the different
degrees of influence played by the Romance
source. In particular, it explores the
relationship between the level of linguistic
competence of the poets in the source language
and the degree to which the source metrical
forms can be emulated in the target language.
Works Cited
Beltrami, Pietro G. 2002.
La metrica italiana. Il Mulino:
Bologna.
Dinu, Mihai. 1993. “Structure accentuelles de
l’alexandrin che Racine”. In
Langue Française. 99:
63–74.
Duffell, Martin. 2010. “Syllable and Foot: The Influence
of French Metrics on English Verse”. In
Études de
langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter
T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème anniversaire.
Turnout: Brepols. Pp. 771–586.
Elwert, Theodor W. 1973.
Versificazione italiana dalle
origini ai giorni nostri. Firenze: Le Monnier.
Gasparov, M. L. 1996.
A History of European
Versification. Translated by Smith, G. S. and
Tarlinskaja, Marina. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Halle, Morris and Keyser, Samuel.
English Stress: Its
Form, Its Growth, and Its Role in Verse. New York:
Harper.