Text-setting Constraints: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores text-setting in English and Spanish folk songs, arguing that the constraints which regulate the articulation of rhythm in a specific language (in this case, English and Spanish) coincide with those at work in the process of text-to-tune alignment. Two case studies are analysed using Optimality Theory text-setting constraints.

Keywords:

• Text-setting
• Optimality Theory
• Prosody
• Rhythm
• Metrics
• Stress-timed Languages
• Syllable-timed Languages

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Myf Turpin and two anonymous AJL referees for a number of valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Any remaining errors are my own.

Notes

According to Halle and Keyser (1971: 139–140), ‘an adequate theory of prosody […] should be expected to […] help us to understand the nature of metrical verse and illuminate the relationship between a speaker's everyday linguistic competence and his ability to judge verses as metrical or unmetrical and as complex or simple’.

²Stress is phonological in English and Spanish. In this paper, it is analysed exclusively at the word level. For the physical correlates of stress, see Hyman (1977: 40).

³By ‘strong beat’ I am referring to beats 1 and 3 in 4/4 rhythm, beat 1 in 2/4, beats 1 and 4 in 6/8 rhythm, and so on.

⁴There are other types of PARALLELISM recorded in the literature about text-setting. In this paper, I am exclusively dealing with positional PARALLELISM as defined in example (4).

⁵Full text of The farmer's boy: ‘The sun went down, beyond yon hills/Across yon dreary moor/When weary and lame, a boy there came/Up to the farmer's door.//May I ask you, if any there be/That will give me employ/To plough and sow, to reap and mow,/And to be a farmer's boy?//And if that thou won't me employ/One thing I have to ask/Will you shelter me, till break of day/From this cold wintry blast?//At break of day I'll trudge away/Elsewhere to seek employ/To plough and sow, to reap and mow/And to be a farmer's boy.//My father's dead, my mother's left/With her five children small/And what is worse for mother still/I'm the eldest of them all//Though little I be, I fear not work/If thou wilt me employ/To plough and sow, to reap and mow/And to be a farmer's boy.//In course of time, he grew a man/The good old farmer died/And left the boy the house now has/And his daughter for his bride//The boy that was, the farm now has/He thinks and smiles with joy/Of the lucky day he came that way/For to be a farmer's boy’.

⁶I use the term ‘foot’ not in its phonological sense but in its metrical sense. In poetry, the foot is the basic unit used in the scansion of verse. Present-day English verse is built upon the basic principle that there has to be a specific number of stresses per line, each of which gives rise to and governs its respective foot.

⁷The critical nature of a mismatch is language-specific.

⁸Giegerich (1978) is, however, referring to speech, not to text-setting.

⁹Translation of the text: ‘Joy, gentlemen,/noble party of the Kings./The Kings are coming,/the Kings are coming tomorrow,/the first party on the year/that is celebrated in Spain./Joy, gentlemen …/The shepherds, who knew/that the boy was in Bethlehem,/have left the sheep/and have hurried up./Joy, gentlemen …/What are you trying to tell me, boy,/with that straight finger?/Do you want to take me to court?/Forgive me for my sins’.

¹⁰In Spanish verse, lines are generally isosyllabic, that is, they tend to have the same number of syllables (see Baehr 1970). Lexical stresses are kept. In addition, all lines require a rhythmic accent on the penultimate syllable and lines of five or more syllables have one or more auxiliary accents.

¹¹Alternatively, the mismatch may be due to an edge constraint, such as one requiring the edge of a musical phrase to coincide with the edge of a linguistic phrase. For reasons of space, I am leaving the discussion of edge constraints for future research.