That’s not a bad comparison. Though funnily enough, I have a very specific technical disagreement with Steele which, in one way, leaves me sympathetic to Victoria’s cynicism about the utility of establishing abstract prosodic principles: substack.com/profile/16…

He has a very awkward relationship with these two patterns because, on the one hand, they don’t accord with his abstract preconceptions, but on the other hand, he can’t deny their existence in practice. His way of accounting for them, and the way in which he insists they should be delivered, is incredibly awkward!

By comparison, someone unstudied in prosodic theory would simply read these patterns naturally, and internalise their rhythmic departure from the iambic default.

It’s an interesting conversation!