Statistical Investigation of Russian Dolnik Trimeter

Russian dolnik is the kind of verse with three metrical accents and two interaccentual intervals of 1–2 syllables. Four rhythmical elements of this verse are investigated in this paper I) the arrangement of stresses (different combinations of accents and interaccentual intervals); II) unstressed beginnings of lines (anacrusis); III) the arrangement of word-boundaries; IV) additional accents on the anacrusis. All the empirical data are compared with the characteristics theoretically calculated by the theorem of multiplication of the probabilities (the method of B. Tomashevskii with the corrections of A. N. Kolmogorov). The comparison shows that rhythmical elements III and IV nearly follow the natural tendencies of language, and only elements I and II display some specifical rhythmical tendencies of verse. There are three such tendencies in the evolution of dolnik. a) isolating tendency (dolnik avoids rhythmical forms in common with other meters), b) isosyllabic tendency, c) anapestical tendency. The interaction of these tendencies forms three principal types of dolnik trimeter by Russian poets "Esenin type", "Gumilev type" "Tsvetaeva type".