The main question of the Coincidence Test of Pollock (1977) is whether the syntactic units run parallel with the metrical units or not. As for the metre, the shârdûlavikrîdita metre is chosen, consisting of 19 syllables in a quarter, with the internal pause, or yati, at the 12th. The syntactical units are the units as defined in Generative Grammar, which I describe very briefly below.
The metrical units now are the units as separated by the internal and external verse boundaries. For the shârdûlavikrîdita metre this means that there are four metrical units, two in each line. The first group runs from syllable 1 up to and including syllable 12, the second group from syllalbe 13 up to and including the last syllable, number 19. The second line of the verse is identical with the first line.
The syntactical units are defined as constituents in the sense of Generative Grammar (see below). Constituents may not be divided amongst metrical units. In each metrical unit those constituents have to be present which are, hierarchically speaking, closer to each other, than to the constituents in the other metrical unit of the same line. This means that the internal verse pause, or yati, must coincide with a node of a higher order. If the above mentioned characteristics are not shown, a line is considered as exhibiting non-coincidence.
Non-coincidence is not the same as enjambement. Enjambement is the occurrence of one or more elements in a line that syntactically belong to the sentence in the very next line. It provides a certain stress, or expectation, dependent on the elements involved. That enjambement is not an arbritrary device is seen in its use. For example, Kiparsky (1975:583) observed that Shakespeare's lines always coincide with end of phrase. Enjambement is restricted by syntactic rules. A possible Shakespearean enjambement is provided by verses in which the noun phrase can be found in the first line, and the verb phrase in the second line. Another enjambement is found in verses with the noun phrase and the verb occurring both in the first line, and the object in the second line. In the last case, the object fills up the whole line. Example,
... Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite
... other women cloy
The appetites they feed ...
(Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, 2.1-2)
In his later dramas Shakespeare uses proclitics at the end of the line, to emphasize the enjambement. It is striking that he did not do so in his earlier works. Flynn (1979:88-105) observes that the author only uses such a proclitic if it is not already an element of any of the major constituents of the following line. Example:
Thy mother was as piece of virtue, and
She said thou wast my daughter ...
(The Tempest 1.ii)
The proclitic and may be considered as element of COMPlement, and therefore belongs not to the sentence proper in the second line, as we will see.