Phonemic repetitions are widely used both in English poetry and prose; they may be divided into three groups: alliteration, assonance and rhyme. Phonemic repetitions may have the following functions in the literary texts:
(1) of providing the aesthetic and emotional effect based on deviations from the normal distribution of sounds;
(2) of intensifying acoustic and semantic connections in a sequence of words or poetical lines thus "welding words together in order to weld thoughts together" ;
(3) of emphasizing words, images and themes that are logically important.
Rhyme is a repetition of the same sound, usually at the ends of two or more lines. The effect is the greatest when the lines succeed one another immediately or near enough for the resemblance of sound to strike the ear.
Alliteration is a repetition of the same consonant at the beginning of neighbouring words or accented syllables. All Anglo-Saxon poetry was alliterative.-In modern verse alliteration is used more sparingly but still very frequently and often with a telling effect:
notice the musical effect of alliteration in the following lines from Tennyson:
But any man that walks the mead,
In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humours lead, A meaning suited to his mind.
Assonance is agreement (identity or similarity) of vowels in conjunction with different consonantal sounds.
