Enjambment Types

The types detected by our automatic enjambment detection system correspond to the typology explained below.

First, the relevant elements of Quilis' (1964) and Spang's (1983) characterization of enjambment are provided.

Then, the enjambment types detected by our system are described.

Theoretical framework for enjambment typology

The characterization of enjambment we adopted is based on constructs by Quilis (1964) and Spang (1983).

Although other criteria can be considered to characterize enjambment and its types (see Martínez Cantón's 2011 systematic review), the main criterion chosen here is the type of lexical or syntactic units that are "broken up" by a metrical pause.

Quilis performed recitation experiments, and concluded that enjambment takes place when certain syntactic constituents, or certain part-of-speech sequences, are broken up across a metrical pause, as detailed below. Examples for each case in the typology are in the table below.

  • Phrase-bounded enjambment (encabalgamiento sirremático): It takes place between elements in the same phrase.
    • noun + adjective
    • noun + prepositional complement modifying the noun
    • verb + adverb
    • article, determiner, clitic, conjunction, correlative adverbs + the element they introduce
    • complex verb tenses, verb chains
    • verb + suplemento (i.e. a lexically determined prepositional complement governed by the verb, known as suplemento or complemento de régimen in Spanish descriptive grammar)
    • adverb + adjective
  • Lexical enjambment (encabalgamiento léxico or tmesis): When it is a word iself that gets broken up by the metrical pause
  • Cross-clause enjambment (encabalgamiento oracional): Takes place when a noun-antecedent and the relative clause attached to it are separated by a metrical pause.

Besides the syntactic contexts identified by Quilis, Spang noted that, even if the effect is less strong than for the environments identified by Quilis, it can feel unnatural for readers when the subject or direct object do not occur in the same line as their related verb. To distinguish these cases from enjambment itself, Spang referred to these cases as enlace, which we translate as expansion.

  • verb + subject expansion
  • verb + direct object expansion

Types detected by our system

The enjambment types detected by the system are described below.

For each type, the English and Spanish tag are provided, besides the description, a Spanish example, a relatively literal English gloss, and, for cases where the gloss is incomprehensible (e.g. with idioms), a possible English translation.

In the examples, a poetry-line boundary is indicated with a forward slash, "/".