Interpretation of "Phonetic Ends" in Chinese Poetry

The rhythm of Chinese poetry is a recitation of the rhythm form of Chinese poetry. As early as the early 1950s, Bian clearly pointed out that there were two basic rhythms in China's ancient poems, namely, four or six-character poems and five or seven-character poems. Through analysis, he further pointed out that these two basic rhythms also exist in new poems: "The new poems we see now can be divided into two tones according to the difference between the two-character tone and the three-character tone at the end of each line. If a poem ends with two words, it is dominant or dominant, and the tone tends to be conversational (equivalent to the old saying' back tone'), then continue; If a poem ends in three sentences, and it is dominant or dominant, the tone will tend to sing (equivalent to the old saying' intonation'),' slide down' or' hum down'. L 14 He called this new poetic style with intonation "oral metrical style" and this new poetic style with intonation "folk song style". Bian Shi's viewpoint points out the basic direction for us to further analyze the rhythm of metrical new poems. However, he did not discuss the essence of these two rhythms, and some statements are still debatable. For example, he thinks that the intonation is caused by the trisyllabic intonation at the end of the poem, but the fact is that the intonation is caused by the monosyllabic intonation separated from the trisyllabic intonation. For another example, the three tones at the end of a new sentence in metrical style do not all cause intonation like the three tones at the end of an ancient sentence, but some of them also cause intonation. This paper will deeply discuss the essence of reciting new poems in general metrical style (that is, Bian Shi's "oral metrical style") and reciting new poems in folk style, and focus on the above-mentioned problems of Bian Shi. The metrical pattern of new poetry is the inheritance and development of the metrical pattern of ancient poetry, so it is necessary to briefly talk about the metrical pattern of ancient poetry. (1) The rhythm and tone of ancient poetry In short, ancient poetry is mainly five-character and seven-character poetry. The prosodic form of five-character poems is "221", that is, it contains two disyllabic intonations (namely, two-character intonation) and one monosyllabic intonation (namely, one-character intonation). The prosodic form of the seven-character poem is "222 1", which contains three disyllabic tones and one monosyllabic tone. Bian Zhilin once said: "Rhythm is a repetition in a certain interval." This sentence is simple and to the point. According to this concept of rhythm, we can specifically say that the essence of poetry rhythm is the repetition of rhythm units at certain intervals. The so-called "certain interval" refers to roughly equal time intervals. The rhythmic unit of China's poetry is "intonation" (abbreviated as "intonation"), which is generally composed of words or phrases, so there can be a long pause after it. It is the synchronic repetition of a certain number of similar intonations in the lines that leads to the unique rhythm of China's poems, and correspondingly, the unique rhythm tone of China's poems. Judging from the rhythm form of the above five-seven-character poems, they all end in a single tone. As far as the rhythm law of tone isochronous repetition is concerned, this single tone can be read longer, that is, with a little drawl, which results in the intonation of the poem. It can be seen that the essence of intonation in ancient poetry lies in that in the isochronous repetition of intonation, the last tone of the line can be lengthened a little, which is a bit close to the tone of singing. The essence of the intonation of ancient poetry lies in that the last sound of a line of poetry is not easy to read for a long time, so it is closer to the tone of speech of natural language. Let's look at the intonation of Li Bai's five-character poem "Thinking of a Quiet Night" (the symbol "one" means that the pronunciation is long, accounting for about half a beat): before going to bed/the moon/the light, the doubt/the ground/the frost is one. Raise your head/look forward to the beginning of the month, and make up your mind/think about it/fight for it. We can see that every sentence is not divided into lines, but discussed once every ten days. They are all read in three sentences, and the last two sentences are formally read separately, with different tones, that is, different beats, in order to make each sentence end in a single tone, that is, to form the so-called "single tone tail". In the repetition of the three tones of the poem, the suffixes of these monosyllables can be extended a little, thus resulting in the unified intonation of the poem. If these last two poems are read as "looking up/looking at the bright moon, looking down/thinking/hometown", the last sound at the end of the double tone cannot be extended, which will lead to intonation rather than intonation; The rhythm of the whole poem is not harmonious. If all the poems are read as "two or three" rhythms and end with three tones (for example, the first sentence is "before going to bed/moonlight"), there will be two results: one is that the number of tones contained in the poems is too small to produce the necessary repetitions, so the rhythm is not enough.

Different; Secondly, in the isochronous repetition of these two sounds, the last sound of the three-tone tail should not be prolonged, and the whole three-tone tail must be read quickly, so that it will not cause intonation, but a fast-paced intonation. There were four-character poems or six-character poems in ancient times. The rhythmic form of four-character poems is "Er", such as "Jia Xu/Cang Cang, Bai Lu/Wei Shuang" poems in The Book of Songs. ("Qin Feng? The rhythm of the six-character rhyme is "222", such as the poem "Growing/Spring Grass/Autumn Green, Falling/Chang Song/Xia Han" in Wang Wei's Pastoral Music (Part I). Both poems end in two tones, so their rhythm is intonation. The Book of Songs is mainly a four-character poem, so its rhythm is mainly chanting things. The rhythm and tone of six-character poems are obviously chanting things, but the number of six-character poems is very small. There are more than four or six poems in Chuci (some of which are not function words), which end in two tones and the rhythm is basically an aria. Among the ci and qu, there are more 57-word poems and 46-word poems, and their rhythm and tone are mixed and cadenced. Because ancient poems are mainly five-character or seven-character poems, the rhythm of ancient poems is mainly intonation, followed by recitation. (2) The rhythm and tone of general metrical new poems: The rhythm principle of reciting metrical new poems is the same as that of ancient poems, and they are all isochronous reactions of a certain number of tones in the lines. Moreover, just as ancient poems mainly play three five-character poems and four seven-character poems, the main play of metrical new poems is three lines and four lines (only the number of lines is not fixed). However, metrical new poems are composed of modern Chinese, and their rhythm units are mainly disyllabic and trisyllabic, not disyllabic and monosyllabic like ancient poems. Another important difference is that the ancient five-seven-character metrical poems ended in a single tone, resulting in intonation. However, metrical new poems generally end in two tones, resulting in intonation. For example, Wen Yiduo's * * * twenty lines "Dead Water", the masterpiece of metrical new poetry, each line contains three disyllabic intonations and one trisyllabic intonation, and all of them end in disyllabic intonation, thus forming a unified intonation. Just look at the first two lines of the poem: this is/a ditch/despair/stagnant water, the breeze/can't afford to blow/a little bit/a kind of loss. The reason why Dead Water has become a model of metrical new poetry is related to its unified two-tone ending and corresponding unified intonation. Many metrical new poems, including some metrical new poems, don't always end in two tones, but one or several lines end in one or three tones, so the rhythm and tone are not uniform. The intonation of metrical new poems is caused by two tones, just like the intonation of ancient poems, but it is different from the intonation of ancient poems in three aspects. The first one is more common. Because most metrical new poems mainly end in two tones, intonation is the most common in metrical new poems. In metrical new poems, only folk songs are mainly monosyllabic and chanting, but they are not the mainstream. On the contrary, in ancient poetry, the five-seven-character metrical poem ending in a single tone is the mainstream, and the single tone ending causes intonation, so intonation is the most common in ancient poetry. The intonation of ancient poetry mainly exists in four-character poems and Chu ci: it only exists partially in the lyrics, because the rhythm and tone of the lyrics are generally a mixture of intonation and intonation. The second difference is that the recitation of metrical new poems is farther from the intonation and closer to the tone of voice. Ancient six-character poems, especially four-character poems, are very short. If the reading speed is slow and the pronunciation is long, it is easy to approach the intonation, or it has a little intonation nature, but it is far from the tone of everyday speech. However, the verses of metrical new poems are generally longer and often read relatively quickly, so the two-syllable ending makes them read farther away from the intonation and closer to the tone of prose and speech. The third difference is that the intonation forms of metrical new poems are diverse. This difference is more complicated. It means that in metrical new poems, not only two-syllable endings cause intonation, but also three-syllable endings and some monosyllabic endings cause intonation. In ancient Chinese poetry, only poems ending in two syllables arouse intonation.

The intonation caused by the trisyllabic endings and some monosyllabic endings of metrical new poems are discussed below. Metric new poems mainly include three-tone poems and all three-tone poems, which can form independent three-tone tones. Of course, the three-character tone is also an intonation, because the last sound of the three-character tone cannot be prolonged. However, this three-tone intonation is different from the two-tone intonation. Compare the first two verses of Wen Jie's Volunteer: Grazing A .. fn/ Riding/Drunk, and talk about their own/volunteering. They want to/build Heshuo/grassland into a/human/orchestra-pasture/running/lawn mower tribe/opening/veterinary hospital, lakeside/standing/dairy factory, river/crossing/. Trisyllabic endings can generally be decomposed into "two-one" structure, resulting in monosyllabic endings. In this way, the second paragraph of "Volunteers" can also be read as: ending/running/mowing/machine width _-,tribe/opening/veterinarian/courtyard 1, lakeside/standing/dairy/factory 1, irrigation/motorcycle/choice. Because the ending is monosyllabic, it is out of tune with the recitation in the first paragraph. A similar situation is like the first six lines of Ai Qing's "Venice Serenade": Streaming/River, Streaming/Light: One year's people stand still/play the guitar and sing/sing: the first two lines are two-tone intonation, and the last few lines are suitable for reading with three-tone intonation, but the tone is a little urgent. If you pronounce it as "one/youth/person one", the tone will suddenly be much slower, the tonality will be different, and it will be out of harmony with the first two lines. In addition, this foreign poem is not suitable to be read as a single rhyme, because the single rhyme in metrical new poems is a folk song poem with national characteristics. The tone is urgent, which is the main difference between three-tone and two-tone tone tone. The following three endings are the most urgent: at present/green belt/continuous/pumping past, carrying pole wood/measuring days/knots/slipping past. -Bian's The Return of the Native is not only a three-tone rhyme at the end of the line, but also other lines of the poem. The line is very long, so the tone is particularly fast. Bian said that this is his "occasional intentional use of three syllables to convey a feeling of rapid penetration into the bone marrow" [i]2ii. It seems that some metrical new poems can be read as three-tone intonation or single-tone intonation. Such as "Coaxing Children" by Liushahe, which has three sections in the same form and only records the first section. Let's look at the rhythm form that causes chanting: dad/changed/bullpen,

Today/another change/the horse at home, kneeling on the bed/crawling on all fours, be a good boy/come on/ride a horse! The first two lines of a poem are mostly two-tone intonation, but the end of the line is three-tone intonation, and the tone suddenly accelerates, which often shows the humorous and playful side of the poem. Let's look at the rhythm forms of intonation: dad/bian 1/ zhang/year ~, Jin/bian/jia/ma yi, laughing, kneeling/bed/hoof/climbing, humble dating) B/ gao/ma/ma yi, and ending with a single tone with less tones, which is more in line with the rhythm form itself. The monosyllabic ending leads to the intonation of folk poems; at the same time, because the pronunciation of monosyllabic ending is lengthened and the rhythm is slowed down, it can highlight the deep and painful side of the poem. In metrical new poems, the last line of a single syllable can sometimes be pronounced as intonation rather than intonation. The essence of intonation is to lengthen a single tone. When a single tone is not lengthened, it is not intonation but intonation. For example, there is a passage in Wen Yiduo's prayer:/Wait for Dai/spoon/mouse/person whose/heart/heart # I/Jing Ke/regent/blood, who is/Shennong/Huangdi's/legacy. The first line of this poem is a three-tone ending, and the last line is a two-tone ending, all of which are intonation: if we read the two single-tone endings "heart" and "blood" in the middle, which are also intonation, the intonation of the whole poem will be unified. If we read the two sentences of "heart" and "blood" for a long time, or even break down the three-syllable sentence in the first line into monosyllabic sentences, the first three lines of this poem will become intonation: please/tell me/who/China, who has/Yao Shun's/heart one, whose blood/is Jing Ke/Regent/blood one. However, this is inconsistent with the tone of the last line. It is also out of harmony with the tone of the whole poem, because judging from the tone of the other five paragraphs of the whole poem, most of the lines are in the tone of double-tone. Another example is Shen Ziman's poem "Don't": I am/gently/quietly/coming, like water/drifting/a leaf/duckweed; I left again/gently/quietly/like a forest/blowing/a breeze. You love/think of me/think of me/you think of me/a star/a summer night; You love me/forget me/forget me/like a spring dream. The first paragraph is a two-tone ending. The last section is a monosyllabic ending. If it's a long reading, it's intonation. Don't drag it out, just read half a beat, that is, chanting. The latter reading is more appropriate, because the first paragraph is intonation and the last paragraph is intonation. The rhythm and tone of the whole poem are unified and harmonious. In addition, this poem is not suitable for reading as a ballad poem in terms of content and emotional appeal. The intonation of metrical new poems is mainly caused by the double-ended intonation, which means that the double-ended intonation is the main intonation. Three-tone tail tone and single-tone tail tone take second place. The essence of the formation of the two-tone ending in metrical new poems is the same as that in ancient poems, because the two-tone ending is not easy to drag on, so it can't cause intonation, which leads to intonation. The intonation of metrical new poems with three endings is also caused by the inconvenience of extending the three endings. Its monosyllabic ending tone is caused by deliberately not lengthening the monosyllabic ending. (3) The intonation of folk new poems: The intonation of folk new poems is the inheritance and development of the intonation tradition of ancient poems with five or seven words (including ancient folk songs with five or seven words). The similarity between the two is that they are both caused by extended monosyllabic endings. Look at a poem in Li Ji's Xinmin song "Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang" (all the following unsigned examples are quoted from this poem): female/soap/Mou Meng/Puyi. Don't choose/Fu Ge/Die Yi/? One. These two lines of poems are completely the "221" form of ancient seven-character poems. The second half of the poem is officially pronounced as "Twenty-one", although the word "Li Xiangxiang" in it is inseparable in meaning (there is a similar situation in ancient Wuqiyan). The intonation of these two lines is mainly caused by the lengthening of monosyllabic endings "Xiang" and "Niang". Bian and other scholars believe that the intonation of new poems in folk songs is caused by three-tone endings. In fact, just as it is not the three-tone tail but the single-tone tail that causes the intonation of the May 7th poem, it is not the three-tone tail but the single-tone tail that causes the intonation of the folk songs and new poems. Please look at the following poem: a/ sister/a big, homeless/person/found a home. In the first line, we will read the three-syllable "One Big", and in the second line, we will read the four-syllable "Finding Home", so the tone we read is obviously not intonation but intonation. If the four tones of Searching for Home are further divided into two tones of Searching for Home One, then at the end of the two lines, there is a three-tone tone and a monosyllabic tone, and the tones are even more inconsistent. And the number of lines is not uniform: one is three lines and the other is four lines. But if the two lines are divided into monosyllabic suffixes, they can be unified as: one/sister/one/Taiyi. No palm/person/discovery/home ~. These two lines are all four-tone numbers, both ending in a single tone, which is very long to read, resulting in quite a lot of such situations in Wang Gui and Li Xiangxiang. Obviously, this is the only way to handle it properly. Compare the following two examples: look around/hometown people/relatives/relatives, talk about/hometown dialect/changed/tuned. -Liang Shangquan's The Return of the Native

"The old man/you didn't/sick? Why are you/staring/not talking? " -Wen Yiduo's Sin is a nine-character poem. But the first example is four nine-character lines, single

At the end of intonation, the intonation of folk songs and new poems is formed; The latter example is a three-tone nine-character poem, which ends with three tones. The intonation of general metrical new poems. The difference between the two is obvious. Try to read the previous example as the end of three syllables:. See/hometown people/relatives, speak/hometown dialect/tone sandhi. This lost the unique intonation of the new poems in folk songs and became the same.

A case of chanting. However, judging from the format of the whole poem The Return of the Native, this reading method is not appropriate. Because there are poems such as "I didn't go back to my hometown/ask first/a thousand sounds/a good one, and I am approaching again/my hometown/another road/a thousand sounds/a morning", the end of the line is only suitable for single tones, not for four tones such as "a thousand sounds are good" and "a thousand sounds are early". It can be inferred that the poet consciously created a monosyllabic ending line to drag it out, resulting in the intonation of new poems in folk songs. On the contrary, if you read the two lines of "sin" as a monosyllabic ending: "old man/are you sick/sick?" Why do you/look straight/not say/say one thing? "The original tone is gone, but there is a tone. But this tone doesn't quite match the conversational tone of the poem. It is unnatural for empty words to "lever" into a protracted dinner alone. Occasionally, this situation can be tolerated (in ancient poetry and modern folk songs, empty words occasionally end in a single tone). However, the poem "Sin" has three sections, each with six lines, three of which end with the function word "le". If they are all extended to a single meal, it is unnatural and awkward, which is obviously inappropriate; In addition, several lines of this poem end in two tones and cannot be read in one tone. Therefore, the tone of the whole poem cannot be unified. But if you read it in three tones, the whole poem can be unified into intonation. From this, it can also be inferred that the author of Sin consciously ends with a three-tone intonation, which constitutes a unique intonation. Obviously, he is not going to create a single-ended folk song. Although both the new poems in folk songs and the ancient poems with five or seven words have the intonation caused by monosyllabic endings, the intonation of the former is different due to some development and changes of monosyllabic endings. The prosodic forms of ancient May 7th poems are fixed "22 1" and "222 1", so the intonation is stable and unified. The rhythm form of new poems in folk songs is also the same monosyllabic ending, and the rest of the intonation in the sentence is not necessarily disyllabic, but also trisyllabic or even tetrasyllabic. For example, Shandandan/Huahua/Jiao Hong/Jieyi, Beibei/Jiao Jiao/Chewing, one or two lines are monosyllabic intonation, but because the first line is trisyllabic intonation, the tones of the first line and the second line are slightly different. This is the change of the lines in the first half of folk songs. The change in the lower half of the line is more important. The second half sentence in folk songs has the form of "21" and "31" just like the ancient poems of May 7th. For example, the second half of the above sentence "no family/people/found/family one". Forks, such as: a pair/big eyes/water king/king, so/dew/drop on the grass/drop. The "trinity" form in the lower part of the second line has made the tone more urgent, because the upper part is also two trisyllables, so the tone is more urgent. Although this form is still a kind of intonation, it is very different from the slow intonation of ancient five-seven-character poems. There are also occasional two-syllable endings in folk songs and new poems, such as: bend in the ditch/mud/yellow again/another one, dig a piece/mud/pinch us/two; If the two lines end differently, the rhythm and tone will be inconsistent and unharmonious. This is also an "anomaly", an anomaly in rhythm and tone, but this anomaly has no positive significance in meter. There are a few two-syllable endings in ancient and modern folk songs, but as far as the form of folk songs itself, that is, the form of apprentice songs and music songs (not the form of reciting poems), the two-syllable endings usually sing the sound one beat at a time or several beats at a time, which does not greatly hinder the rhythm of music. But when they read it as a recitation poem, they really feel that the rhythm and tone are not harmonious. However, folk new poetry is generally for people to read, not to sing, so its rhythm and tone are not uniform and have no positive significance. In addition to folk songs, there are also children's poems in rhythmic new poems. The intonation of children's poems is not all intonation, but many children's poems are intonation. The form and tone of children's poems are exactly the same as those of ancient five-seven-character poems, such as a passage in Liu Ruomin's Seawater: Seawater/Seawater/I ask you, why/what/why/blue? Haipeng/Smile/Gao Huan/Answer me/Hug me/Hold me/Tianyi. There are also some changes, such as a passage in Jin Jin's "Spring Girl and Grandpa Xue": Snow White/Slowly/North/Gone with the Wind, Grandpa Xue/Give/Spring Girl/A Bag/Cake, Shiny/Ice/White/Snow ~, Boxing/Hugging/Hehe/Baking. Breathe/blow away/melt/melt in one breath. There are some changes in the first half of the sentence and the second half of the sentence, which are similar to the changes in the lines of folk songs, but the end of the single tone has not changed, so there is intonation. Poems with intonation can be read in time, read smoothly and remember easily, which is why children's poems often use monosyllabic intonation. Refer to Wen Xian [1] Bian. Humming rhythm (intonation) and speaking rhythm (intonation)