ABSTRACT
Over the past fifteen years we have witnessed a good deal of activity in one compartment of applied linguistics, the application of 'suprasegmental' phonemics to the analysis of English metre. Starting with a suggestion by Harold Whitehall in 1951 that this was a possible use of Trager-Smith phonology,2 it has culminated (perhaps) in a full-scale discussion by another of the pioneers, Seymour Chatman . The publication of this book provides an occasion for an appraisal of the assumptions and achievements of the approach.
