Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T20:41:03.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constraint ranking in Middle English stress-shifting1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Donka Minkova
Donka Minkova
Affiliation:
English DepartmentUCLALos Angeles, CA 90095MINKOVA@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Developing an idea first articulated by Luick in 1896, Halle & Keyser (1971) posit the introduction of a new accentuation rule in Middle English (ME), the weight-sensitive Romance Stress Rule (RSR). All post-1971 accounts of English stress take the syllable weight principle of the RSR as their starting point. For twenty-five years there has been no scrutiny of the assumption that syllable weight became relevant for stress assignment in ME. It has been claimed, and the claims have not been addressed, that the RSR is part of the phonology of late OE (O'Neil, 1973), that by late ME the RSR had completely replaced the Germanic accentuation patterns (Nakao, 1977), and that the existence of the RSR in ME justifies the reconstruction of analogical pronunciations such as hardi, holi, riding(e), a real shift from the Germanic to the Romance category (Halle & Keyser, 1971; Luick, 1896). The paper refutes these claims on the basis of new evidence and analysis in terms of generalized prosodic constraints.

Type
Articles
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 135 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barney, S. A. (ed.) (1987). Troilus and Criseyde. In Benson, L. D. (gen. ed.), The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd edn.Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Barney, S. A. (1993). Studies in Troilus. Chaucer's text, meter, and diction. East Lansing: Colleagues Press.Google Scholar
Beare, W. (1957). Latin verse and European song: a study in accent and rhythm. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Benson, L. D. (1993). A glossarial concordance to the Riverside Chaucer. (Reference Library of the Humanities, 1699.) New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Bliss, A. J. (ed.) (1966). Sir Orfeo. 2nd edn.Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Booij, G. & Lieber, R. (1993). On the simultaneity of morphological and prosodic structure. In Hargus, S. & Kaisse, E. (eds.) Studies in lexical phonology, vol. IV: Phonetics and phonology, San Diego: Academic Press. 23–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, C. (ed.) (1932/1962). English lyrics of the XIII century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cable, T. (1990). The English alliterative tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. (1996). The chronology of French and Latin loan words in English. Transactions of the Philological Society 93: 95–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cromie, H. (1875/1991). A rhyme-index to the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.Google Scholar
Dekeyser, X. (1986). Romance loans in Middle English: a re-assessment. In Kastovsky, D. & Szwedek, A. (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries, vol. I: Linguistic theory and historical linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 253–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dresher, B. E. & Lahiri, A. (1991). The Germanic foot: metrical coherence in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 251–86.Google Scholar
Duggan, H. (1990). Stress assignment in Middle English alliterative poetry. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 89: 309–29.Google Scholar
Eckhardt, E. (1942). Der Übergang zur germanischen Betonung bei den Wörtern französischer Herkunft im Mittelenglischen. Englische Studien 75: 9–66.Google Scholar
Finkenstaedt, T., Leisi, E., & Wolff, D. (1970). A chronological English dictionary. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Giegerich, H. (1992). English phonology: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gimson, A. C. (1970). An introduction to the pronunciation of English. 2nd edn.London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
SirGollancz, I. (ed.) (1940). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (Early English Text Society, o.s. 210.) London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Halle, M. & Keyser, S. J. (1966). Chaucer and the study of prosody. College English 28: 187–219Google Scholar
repr. in Freeman, D. C. (ed.), Linguistics and literary style. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970. 366–427.Google Scholar
Halle, M. & Keyser, S. J. (1971). English stress: its form, its growth, and its role in verse. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical stress theory: principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hung, H. J. (1993). Iambicity, rhythm, and non-parsing. MS, University of Ottawa. Rutgers Optimality Archive: ROA-9.Google Scholar
Hyman, L. (1977). On the nature of linguistic stress. In Hyman, L. (ed.), Studies in stress and accent. Los Angeles: University of Southern California. 37–82.Google Scholar
Itô, J. & Mester, R. A. (1995). Japanese phonology. In Goldsmith, J. (ed.), A handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 817–39.Google Scholar
Jespersen, O. (1909[1965]). A modern English grammar on historical principles, vol. I. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard. (1965 reprint from London: George Allen and Unwin.)Google Scholar
Jordan, R. (1974). Handbook of Middle English grammar: phonology. Translated and revised by Crook, E.. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Kager, R. (1989). A metrical theory of stress and destressing in English and Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kingdon, R. (1958). The groundwork of English stress. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Kottler, B. & Markman, A. M. (1966). A concordance to five Middle English poems. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Lass, R. (1987). The shape of English: structure and history. London: J. M. Dent.Google Scholar
Lass, R. (1992). Phonology and morphology. In Blake, N. (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 23–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Learned, H. D. (1922). The accentuation of Old French loanwords in English. Publications of the Modern Language Association 37: 707–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luick, K. (1896). Untersuchunger zur englischen Lautgeschichte. Strasburg: K. J. Truebner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luick, K. (1914). Zur mittelenglischen Verslehre. Anglia n.s. 26: 268–348.Google Scholar
Luick, K. (1921–40). Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Stuttgart: Bernhard Tauchnitz; repr. 1964.Google Scholar
Mathesius, W. (1934). Zur synchronischen Analyse fremden Sprachguts. Reprinted in Vachek, J. (ed.), A Prague School reader in linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. 398–413.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. S. (1993). Prosodic morphology: constraint interaction and satisfaction. MS, UMass and Rutgers.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. S. (1995). Prosodic morphology. In Goldsmith, J. (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 318–67.Google Scholar
McCully, C. B. (forthcoming). Stress, survival and change: Old to Middle English. In Fisiak, J. (ed.), Linguistic studies in Middle English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Minkoff, M. (1967). English historical grammar. 2nd edn.Sofia: Naouka i Izkoustvo.Google Scholar
Minkova, D. (1982). The environment for open syllable lengthening in Middle English. Folia Linguistica Historica 3.1: 29–58.Google Scholar
Minkova, D. (1996). Verse structure as evidence for prosodic reconstruction in Old English. In Britton, D. (ed.), Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. (Series 4, issue 135.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 13–38.Google Scholar
Minkova, D. (1996b). Non-primary stress in EME accentual-syllabic verse. In McCully, C. B. & Anderson, J. J. (eds.), English historical metrics: prosody from Old English to the Renaissance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 95–120.Google Scholar
Minkova, D. (forthcoming). The proverbs of Alfred: hybrid verse and linguistic reconstruction. Modern Philology, 05 1997.Google Scholar
Minkova, D. & Stockwell, R. P. (1994). Syllable weight, prosody, and meter in Old English. Diachronica 11: 35–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minkova, D. & Stockwell, R. P. (forthcoming). Against the emergence of the nuclear stress rule in Middle English. In Fisiak, J. (ed.), Studies in Middle English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Nakao, T. (1977). The prosodic phonology of late Middle English. Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin.Google Scholar
Nessly, L. (1971). Anglicization in English phonology. Papers from the regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 7: 499–511.Google Scholar
Ogura, M. (1987). Historical English phonology: a lexical perspective. Tokyo: Kenkyusha.Google Scholar
Oizumi, A. (ed.) (1991–1994). A complete concordance to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Programmed by Miki, K.. Hildesheim and New York: Olms-Weidmann.Google Scholar
O'Neil, W. (1973). Some remarks on Old and Middle English stress. In Anderson, R. R. & Kiparsky, P. (eds.), A festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt. 158–65.Google Scholar
Pater, J. (1995). On the nonuniformity of weight-to-stress and stress preservation effects in English. MS, McGill University. Rutgers Optimality Archive: ROA-107.Google Scholar
Phillips, B. (forthcoming). Word frequency and lexical diffusion in English stress shifts. In Hogg, R. & van Bergen, L. (eds.) Historical Linguistics 1995, vol. I. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Pope, M. K. (1934). From Latin to Modern French with especial consideration of Anglo-Norman. Manchester: Manchester University Press; repr. 1952.Google Scholar
Preston, M. J. (1975). A concordance to the Middle English shorter poem. Leeds: W. S. Manley.Google Scholar
Prince, A. (1990). Quantitative consequences of rhythmic organization. Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistics Society 26–II: 355–98.Google Scholar
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (1993). Optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. TR-2, Rutgers University Cognitive Science Center.Google Scholar
Rickard, P. (1989). A history of the French language. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Steriade, D. (1995). What attracts stress to a syllable: discussion of weight and prominence. UCLA lecture notes, 7 February 1995.Google Scholar
Stockwell, R. & Minkova, D. (1988). The English vowel shift: problems of coherence and explanation. In Kastovsky, D. & Bauer, G. (eds.), Luick revisited. Tübingen: Günter Narr. 355–95.Google Scholar
Stockwell, R. & Minkova, D. (forthcoming). Old English metrics and the phonology of resolution. NOWELE 31/32, 10 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sweet, H. (1891–1898). New English grammar. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tolkien, J. R. R. & Gordon, E. V.. (eds.), (1925), repr. 1952 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Vincent, N. (1988). Non-linear phonology in a diachronic perspective: stress and word-structure in Latin and Italian. In Bertinetto, P. M. & Loporcaro, M. (eds.), Certamen phonologicum: papers from the 1987 Cortona Phonology Meeting. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier. 421–31.Google Scholar