Now let's look at idioms first. Once in a lecture at a university, I asked the students present to say a four-word idiom casually, which means which idiom comes to mind first. The students talked a lot, such as squatting, loyalty, being Ma Pingchuan, vigorous, orderly, turning around and so on. These idioms have a common feature. What is this?
If we look at its second and fourth characters again, we will find that the levelness of the second and fourth characters is opposite: tiger's back (flat), red courage (flat), loyalty (flat), horse (flat) and flurry. At that time, students reported more than 20 idioms, except for two, which conformed to this rule. What does this mean?
It shows that most idioms conform to such a rule: two or four words are distinct, that is, the second and fourth words are at opposite levels. If you open the idiom dictionary, you will find that most idioms conform to the law of "24 distinct". I haven't made statistics on the proportion, but according to my feeling, it should be 70% to 80%, and the proportion of students applying for it was higher that day. At that time, more than 20 students reported idioms, but only two people did not conform to this rule, accounting for more than 90%. This illustrates the following problems:
First, it shows that there are tone sandhi and tonality in Chinese. Because without this temperament, purely by probability, this phenomenon of "two or four distinct" can not have such a high proportion.
Second, idioms that show this alternating rule of leveling and leveling are easier to remember. Because if we rely solely on probability, the idioms reported by students should be consistent with those in the idiom dictionary, that is, 70% to 80%, and now it has reached more than 90%. It shows that idioms with this rule are more cadence, catchy and easy for everyone to blurt out.
As we know, most idioms were produced before the Tang Dynasty and as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, which shows that the temperament of Chinese is objective, not artificially imposed or fabricated. This gentle and alternating melody, like the drums of dance steps, is both regular and varied, and can achieve a pleasant effect. Therefore, Chinese is a language with harmonious form and sound, and Chinese metrical poems are the perfect crystallization of the unity of form, sound and meaning. Although the four tones and even tones are long-term latent laws in Chinese, it was not until the Southern Dynasties that Zhou Pian, Shen Yue and others clearly put forward the concept of four tones, and Shen Yue applied this concept to poetry and put forward the theory of "four tones and eight diseases". The theory of "four tones and eight diseases" can be said to be the predecessor of modern poetry meter. The meter of modern poetry matured in the Tang Dynasty. Or in other words, modern poetry (also called metrical poetry) was formed in the Tang Dynasty.
We will hear that metrical poems have several names: modern poems, modern poems and old poems. The names Modern Poetry and Modern Poetry were coined by the Tang Dynasty, because metrical poetry originated in the Tang Dynasty. Compared with the early classical poetry, the Tang people called metrical poetry modern poetry, and some people called it modern poetry. The name "old-style poetry" was named by people who engaged in the New Culture Movement after the May 4th Movement, because a new poetry genre was produced at that time, that is, vernacular poetry, which is what we call "new poetry" today. Because of the "new poem", the original poem is called "old poem" and "old style poem". However, there are also some people who are very dissatisfied with the name "old-style poetry" and think that it implies a derogatory meaning of "outdated". By the way, some people who write new poems call China's traditional poems archaic, which is wrong. Classical poetry and modern poetry are two different poetry genres.
The Metrics of Two Metric Poems
When we write metrical poems today, we don't have to think about "four tones and eight diseases" any more, as long as we conform to metrical poems. Let's talk about the meter of metrical poetry first.
Since the four characters have the law of alternating level and level, and "two or four are distinct", what about the six characters? What about the eight characters? We will naturally think, can this law be extended? Actually, it can be extended. As we know, there are two kinds of common metrical poems, one is five-character metrical poems, the other is five-character quatrains, and the other is five-character metrical poems. One is seven words and one sentence, four sentences are called seven sentences (abbreviation of seven-character quatrains), and eight sentences are called seven laws (abbreviation of seven-character rhymes). So, are there any metrical poems with more than six words and eight words? Theoretically, it is possible, but it is rare. There are a few works with six characters and one sentence, few with eight characters and one sentence, or only in some game poems.