Patterns of Repetition in Folk Song Driven by Phonology and Morphology

Abstract

This paper investigates patterns of morphological repetition in Arabic demonstrated in folk songs, including suffixes, roots and patterns. It also analyzes the functions of the reported repetitions, and examines the interaction between morphological repetition and phonological repetition, represented via rhyme. To supply the data, multiple examples are retrieved from twenty Jordanian folk songs. A statistical analysis is conducted to obtain a frequency distribution and to calculate the percentage of suffix repetitions on the rhyming lines; the selected lines are transcribed and translated. The study proves that folk poetry relies heavily on Arabic morphology, especially suffixation, to illuminate its rhetorical, prosodic and emphatic effects. The results show that suffix repetition occurs most frequently (34.14%), followed by root repetition (25.85%) and pattern repetition (15.28%). The percentage of rhyming lines affected by suffix repetition and final word pattern in each hemistich registered (30.46%) and (45%), respectively. The results confirm that rhyming in folk poetry is not produced haphazardly by the articulation of repeated sounds; instead, it is structured by means of systematic morphological repetition which promotes the theory that repetition is inherently a prosodic device in Arabic. Contrary to the model proposed by Shoubi (1951), which introduces repetition as a negative exaggeration and over assertion, this work proves that repetition is a productive strategy at several linguistic levels, provoked to satisfy the immediate requirements of the language in each context.