Orphan Lines and Orphan Songs

Poetics and Pragmatics of Kmhmu Parallel Verse

Bibliographic Data

ID2823686
AuthorsFrank Proschan (frank proschan is an independent scholar, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume135
Issue538
Pages412-440
Publication date2022-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American Folklore (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882
PublisherUniversity of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.5406/15351882.135.538.02
OpenAlexW4312785980
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited22

The sung verse of Kmhmu highlanders involves a complex and unique system of pervasive canonical parallelism. "Reverse words" in the first member of a parallel set rhyme in a crosswise relation with their meaningful counterparts in the second member of the set. Within this system, some singers employ "orphan lines," where only the first member is sung, and listeners must guess what the meaningful line would be. Roman Jakobson's encouragement to examine such orphan lines in terms of their "near and distant" environment is taken as inspiration to explore the image of parentless children in Kmhmu songs about orphans and to suggest lessons for our own ethnographic practice

Art · Line (geometry) · Linguistics · Literature · Parallelism (grammar) · Poetics · Poetry · Pragmatics · Rhyme · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Computer Science · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Linguistics and Cultural Studies · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy

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