Preliminary Remarks

§ 114. OE is so far removed from Mod E that one may take it for an entirely different language; this is largely due to the peculiarities of its pronunciation.

The survey of OE phonetics deals with word accentuation, the systems of vowels and consonants and their origins. The OE sound system developed from the PG system. It underwent multiple changes in the pre-written periods of history, especially in Early OE. The diachronic description of phonetics in those early periods will show the specifically English tendencies of development and the immediate sources of the sounds in the age of writing.

Word Stress

§ 115. The system of word accentuation inherited from PG underwent no changes in Early OE.

In OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation; in other words, a dynamic or a force stress was employed. In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed; it remained on the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the word and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either. For illustration re-read the passage given in § 113 paying special attention to word accentuation; cf. the forms of the Dat. case of the nouns hlāforde ['xla:vorde], cyninʒe ['kyniŋge] used in the text and the Nom, case of the same nouns: hlāford ['xla:vord], cyninʒ ['kyniŋg]. Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, may have had two stresses, chief and secondary, the chief stress being fixed on the first root-morpheme, e.g. the compound noun Norðmonna from the same extract, received the chief stress upon its first component and the secondary stress on the second component; the grammatical ending -a (Gen. pl) was unaccented. In words with prefixes the position of the stress varied: verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly thrown on to the prefix. Cf.:

ā-'risan, mis-'faran — v (NE arise, ‘go astray’)

tō-weard, 'or-eaid — adj (NE toward, ‘very old’);

'mis-dæd, 'uð-ʒenʒ — n (NE misdeed, ‘escape’).

If the words were derived from the same root, word stress, together with other means, served to distinguish the noun from the verb, cf.:

'and-swaru. n — and-' swarian v (NE answer, answer)

'on-ʒin n — on-'ʒinnan v (NE beginning, begin)

'forwyrd n — for-'weorpan v (‘destruction,’ ‘perish’)

ORIGIN OF OLD ENGLISH VOWELS

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Principal Old English Written Records	\|	Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old English

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