43^ Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



zihleli entliziweni zide zingabi nakuxolelwa, (My sins are many; 

 they possess the heart until there is no forgivenness) where Izono is 

 the governing noun. 



6. The last use of Iteration which we shall call attention to may 

 be called the Literary use. We nave spoken previously of a sort of 

 sub-consciousness in the use of this device. In this last use of it, 

 though a great deal is no doubt still half instinctive or semi-conscious, 

 a good deal is also conscious and intentional. We may divide the 

 literary use of Iteration into four sub-divisions : — 



1. Alliteration, where a succession of words occur beginning 

 with the same letter. We have already seen what is practically the 

 same phenomenon in the primitive and grammatical uses of iteration, 

 but the literary usage of the device is worthy of a separate heading. 

 It is practically universal, and exemplifies very clearly the funda- 

 mental nature of this iterative tendency in language. The quack 

 who advertises " Pink pills for pale people " is as much under the 

 universal influence as the exquisite poet who writes : — 



And on a sudden, lo ! the level lake 

 And the long glories of the winter moon. 



It is a difficult question tO' settle how much of the alliteration which 

 •constantly occurs in all writings, ancient as well as modern, is con- 

 scious, how much semi-conscious, how much altogether unconscious ; 

 but we know at any rate that a good deal of it is entirely conscious 

 and intentional. We find it used in poetry continually from the 

 •earliest to the latest times, and it appears in some poets and in some 

 periods of poetry as one of the most characteristic features. It is 

 one of the notes of Latin poetry, and in such writers as Plautus and 

 Lucretius it affects the whole writing. But as we have seen in the 

 case of the Bantu languages that Iteration may become the basis of 

 all grammatical construction, so we find in the case of Scandinavian 

 and Old English poetry that Iteration may become the basis of the 

 structure of verse. In these cases the whole verse-structure becomes 

 -a combined system of accents and alliteration. " Each full (long 

 verse) has at least four accented syllables, and is divided into two 

 half (short) verses, divided by a pause, and bound together by 

 alliteration ; two accented syllables in the first half verse and one in 

 the second beginning with any vowels (generally different vowels) 

 ■or the same consonant. There is often only one alliterative letter 

 in the first half verse." The words : " Raw flesh ravens got to rive " 

 would give a fair idea of the kind of verse. 



2. Assonance. — Here the resemblance is not in the initial part 

 of the words but rather in the general structure of the words. The 

 name assonance is sometimes used in a special sense for the resem- 

 blance between words in their vowel sounds apart from any resem- 

 blance in consonants. In this sense we may note its use in literature 

 in the older forms of Spanish poetry where assonance served the same 

 purpose as rhyme at the ends of lines, the words at the end of con- 

 secutive lines having the same vowel sounds though not resembling 

 'each other in their consonants. 



