French versification is to be distinguished from English versification (syllable-stress metre) by the following broad principles: the integrity of the French line depends on the number of its syllables rather than on the number and nature of its rhythmic segments (French: mesures, English: ‘feet’); the position of French ‘accents’ (equivalent of English stresses) is determined by the syntactic structure of the line rather than by the inherent stress patterns of individual words; the French accent falls on the last accentuable syllable of each syntactic unit in the line, and since these units naturally vary in length, French rhythmic measures obey no law of recurrence and no principle of regularity, and thus have no connection with the notion of beat; because French accents are linked with syntactic units (words or word-groups), they are linked also with pitch, and because the French line always ends with an accentuated syllable, there is a natural tendency in French verse for the end of the line to coincide with a syntactical break, that is, to be endstopped; it is for this reason that enjambement is potentially a greater transgression in French verse than in English. Individual lines of verse in French thus have a peculiar rhythmic autonomy and the rhythms of one line in no way predict the rhythms of the lines following.