SOURCE: Silbajoris, Rimvydas. Introduction to Russian Versification: The Theories of Trediakovskij, Lomonosov, and Kantemir, pp. 1-35. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.

In excerpt below, Silbajoris explains the syllabo-tonic system and its history, focusing on Trediakovsky's role in the system's development and his related theories.

In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, a system of versification was introduced in Russia which was based on regular alternations of stressed and unstressed syllables. That system is traditionally referred to by Russian scholars as the “syllabo-tonic” system.¹ Its name is rather inadequate, however, because by themselves its two component parts describe two different kinds of versification: the “tonic” (or accentual) pattern of Russian folk poetry comprising a more or less constant number of accents per line, but a variable number of unstressed intervals; and the “syllabic” system of the “learned” poetry of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries which required a...