Towards Typological Classification of Thai Poetic Meters

The aim of this research is to classify traditional Thai poetic meters in terms of the modern approaches to verse and look for their possible typological counterparts in other versification systems. The methods of the research include analyzing of a corpus of Thai classical poems and some previous studies about different Thai meters. This topic is worthy of note, because, though the 700-year-old Thai poetic tradition has a very rich literature heritage, Thai poetic meters have never been described in terms of modern verse theories and compared to other poetic traditions. Our study seems to clear new ground in this respect. Our study shows that there are three main Thai meters: klon, chan and khlong. Klon can easily be classified as a syllabic and chan as a syllabo-metrical meter. The most difficult for classification is khlong. In this meter each line should contain a certain number (7 or 9) of syllables and at the same time certain syllables should be marked by one of diacritical symbols mai tho and mai ek. These symbols are used for tone marking, but in modern Thai none of them is a symbol of a certain tone: the tone depends on both the diacritical symbol and a class of the consonant (all Thai consonant letters belong to one of 3 classes). In view of this, we cannot identify khlong as a determined sequence of tones, but should call it a determined sequence of graphemes. Accordingly, the best decision would be to introduce a special term “syllabo-graphic meter” for classifying khlong. Such type of meter does not have any analogues in other poetic traditions, which makes Thai poetry unique.

Keywords

metrics, Thai poetry, Thai language, Southeast Asian languages, syllabic meters, syllabo-metric meters, internal rhyme, Thai script

Received

29.04.2020

Publication date

30.04.2020

Number of characters

36802

Cite

GOST	Sarkisov I. Towards Typological Classification of Thai Poetic Meters // Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka – 2020. – V. 79. – Issue 2 C. 39-49 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://izv-oifn.ru/S241377150009508-1-1 (circulation date: 25.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S241377150009508-1
MLA	Sarkisov, Ivan V "Towards Typological Classification of Thai Poetic Meters." Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 79.2 (2020):39-49. DOI: 10.31857/S241377150009508-1
APA	Sarkisov I. (2020). Towards Typological Classification of Thai Poetic Meters. Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 79(2), pp.39-49 DOI: 10.31857/S241377150009508-1

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