Word Stress in Middle English and Early New English

§ 363. The system of word accentuation in OE was described in § 115. In OE stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable: the prefix or the root of the word were stressed while the suffixes and endings were unaccented. Word stress in OE was fixed: it never moved in inflection and seldom in derivation.

This way of word accentuation, characteristic of OE, was considerably altered in the succeeding periods. The word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. These changes were connected with the phonetic assimilation of thousands of loan-words adopted during the ME period.

In Late ME poetry we find a variety of differently stressed words. Though poetry permits certain fluctuation of word accent, this variety testifies to greater freedom in the position of word stress.

New accentual patterns are found in numerous ME loan-words from French. Probably, when they first entered the English language they retained their original stress — on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable. This kind of stress could not be preserved for long. Gradually, as the loan-words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word in line with the English (Germanic) system. This shift is accounted for by what is known as the "recessive" tendency. In disyllabic words the accent moved to the first syllable, so that the resulting pattern conformed to the pattern of native words, e.g. ME vertu [ver'tju:] became NE virtue ['və:tjə], cf. native English shortly, childish. The shift can be shown as follows: s's > 'ss (s stands for "syllable").

In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the "rythmic" tendency, which required a regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Under the rhythmic tendency, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. This new stress was either preserved as a secondary stress or else became the only or the principal stress of the word, e.g.

ME recommenden [reko'mendən] > NE recommend [,rekə'mend] — ss'ss > ,ss's;

ME disobeien [diso'beiən] > NE disobey ['diso'bei] — ss'ss > 'ss's;

ME comfortable [komfor'tablə] > NE comfortable ['kʌmfətəbl] — ss'ss>'sss;

ME consecraten [konse'kra:tən] > NE consecrate ['kɔnsikreit] — ss'ss >'sss

(Accentual patterns of the type 'sss or s'sss are common in Mod E, cf. ability, evident, necessity.

In many polysyllabic words both tendencies, the recessive and the rhythmic, operated together and brought about several changes. For instance in NE consolation [,kɔnsə'leiʃn] we find the results of the shift from the final to the preceding syllable [lei] due to the recessive tendency and a secondary stress on the first syllable. In NE possibility the rhythmic factor accounts both for the primary and secondary stresses (the original position of the accent was on the last syllable).

§ 364. Sometimes the shifting of the word stress should be attributed not only to the phonetic tendencies but also to certain morphological factors. Thus stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowed or built in Late ME and in Early NE, which accords with the OE rule: to keep verb prefixes unstressed, e.g. ME accepten, engendren, presenten, NE accept, engender, present. Cf. NE verbs befall, mistake forget. Corresponding nouns sometimes, though not always, received the stress on the first syllable: NE 'present n — pre'sent v; 'discord n — dis'cord v. The latter pairs of words show that the role of word accentuation has grown: word stress performs a phonological function as it distinguishes a verb from a noun. (For the role of word stress in word building see § 595.) Thus it appears that as a result of specifically English (or rather Germanic) tendencies, continuously applied to numerous polysyllabic loan-words, the entire system of word accentuation has altered. The position of word stress has become relatively free and its phonological application has widened: it can be shifted in word derivation, though it is never moved in building grammatical forms.

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