2025. 9.23
Alfred Tennyson の詩 “Locksley Hall” は最初の10スタンザに300音節を含むが、33語が2子音連続で終わり、2語が3音節連続で終わる。ただしこの子音連続のほぼ全てが最も発音のしやすい部類であって、33語や2語は決して大きな数ではないという。Jespersen はこのことから、英語は音声学的には「男性的な活力（male energy）」は備えているが「残忍な力（brutal force）」は備えていない、と結論づけている。
実際に、当該の詩の冒頭10スタンザを見てみよう。語末が2子音連続或いは3子音連続のものをイタリックにしてみた。それぞれ33語と2語になるのを確認されたい。
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.
'T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.—
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
参考文献
Jespersen, Otto. Growth and Structure of the English Language. 10th ed. Oxford: OUP, 1997[1905].
Tennyson, Alfred. Locksley Hall. Available online at Locksley Hall | The Poetry Foundation