Word Stress in ME and Early NE

In OE stress usually fell on the first root syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllableThe word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. As the loan-words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word. It is known as the “recessive” tendency, e.g. vertu [ver´tju:] became NE virtue [və:t∫ə].In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the “rhythmic” tendency. Under it, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. Stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowe. Corresponding nouns sometimes received the stress on the first syllable: NE ΄present n - pre΄sent v;

Unstressed vowels

In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguishes five short vowels in unstressed position [e/i], [a] and [o/u], Late ME had only two vowels in unaccented syllables: [ə] and [i], e.g. OE talu – ME tale [΄ta:lə] – NE tale, OE bodiз – ME body [΄bodi] – NE body. The final [ə] disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt as -e. When the ending –e survived only in spelling, it was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words which did not have this ending before, e.g. OE stān, rād – ME stone, , new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes, e.g. the shifting of word stress in ME and NE, vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer, actor, where [er] and [or] became [ə].

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