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Generative metrics
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<p>Generative metrics is the collective term for three distinct theories of verse structure advanced between 1966 and 1977. Inspired largely by the example of <a href="/facts/Noam_Chomsky/3rtpzlER">Noam Chomsky</a>'s <i>Syntactic Structures</i> (1957) and Chomsky and <a href="/facts/Morris_Halle/vIpRykBE">Morris Halle</a>'s <i><a href="/facts/The_Sound_Pattern_of_English/QvDwURv2">The Sound Pattern of English</a></i> (1968), these theories aim principally at the formulation of explicit linguistic rules that will <i>generate</i> all possible well-formed instances of a given <a href="/facts/Meter_(poetry)/uIzxuQHA">meter</a> (e.g. iambic pentameter) and exclude any that are <i>not</i> well-formed. T.V.F. Brogan notes that of the three theories, "[a]ll three have undergone major revision, so that each exists in two versions, the revised version being preferable to the original in every case." </p>