The type of word stress in old english - Word и Excel - помощь в работе с программами

Word stressTwo types of word accentuation in IE:

-Musical pitch

-Force stress

In CG force stress became the only type of stress
used.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 theaccent fell on the
root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed, it
remainedon
the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the word and did
not shift in word- building
either.Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, may have had two
stresses, chief and secondary,the chief stress being fixed on the
first root-morpheme.In words with prefixes the position of the stress
varied: verb prefixes were unaccented, whilein nouns and adjectives
the stress was commonly thrown
on the prefix:

-Ā-‘risan, mis- ‘faran – v (NE arise,
“go astray”)

-Tō –weard, ‘or-eald – adj (NE toward,
“very old”)

-‘mis-dǽd, ‘uð –geng – n (NE
misdeed, “escape”)If the words were derived from the same
root, word stress, together with other means, served todistinguish
the noun from the verb:

-‘and-swaru n – and-‘swarian v (NE
answer, answer)

-‘on-gin n – on-‘ginnan v (NE beginning,
begin)

-‘forwyrd n – for-‘weorðan
v (“destruction”, “perish”)

Stressed and
unstressed syllables
underwent different
changes.

In stressed
syllables the difference between sounds
was emphasized.

In unstressed
syllables the sounds were weakened and
lost.

Old English phonetics

In Irish monasteries, a form of the Latin alphabet (Uncial script)
evolved which was later adapted and used in English monasteries for
copying texts in Latin and later in English.

ORTHOGRAPHY There are a number of letters used in
Old English which were later discontinued; of these the following are
the main ones: Þ ‘thorn’
and ð ‘eth’
(later replaced by th indicating
the voiced and voiceless ambidental fricatives), ʒ ‘yogh’
used for g,
‘wynn’, i.e. ‘joy’, was a form of the letter w used
in early texts, æ ‘ash’
a ligature (two letters in one form) composed of a and e and
representing a sound intermediate between /a/ and /e/.

PHONOLOGY The writing system of Old English is by and large
phonological, i.e. every letter represents a phoneme. This applies
above all to fricatives though diphthongs, the affricate /dʒ/ and
the fricative /ʃ/ used more than one letter.

fīf [fi:f]
‘five’ frefer [frevər]
‘consolation’ hūs [hu:s]‘house’ rīsan [ri:zan]
‘rise’ þurh [θurx]
‘through’ ōðer [o:ðər]
‘other’ gān [gɑ:n]
‘go’ gift [jift]
‘dowry’ fugol [fuɣol]
‘bird’ cēne [ke:nə]
‘sharp’, cyrice[tʃyritʃə]
‘church’

ALLOPHONY OF /g/ Before back vowels [g] is found, [ɣ] between back
vowels and [j] before and between high vowels. There were two
affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/, the first deriving from palatalisation in
early Old English and the second inherited from pre-Old English.

The fricatives /f, θ,
s/ had two main allophones, a voiceless one at the beginning or end
of a word or in the environment of a voiceless segment and a voiced
one when found intervocalically. This alternation can be seen to this
day and is responsible for present-day alternations
like wife : wives.

The letter c represented
the phoneme /k/, when it occurred before a consonant (cwic,
‘alive’), a back vowel (cuman,
‘come’) or a front vowel which had arisen due to i-umlaut
(cynelic,
‘kingly’). It also represented the phoneme /tʃ/ which arose due
to the early palatalisation of velars cyrice ‘church’.

CONSONANT LENGTH Old English had both long vowels
and long consonants. This was an inherited feature of Germanic and
has only been maintained in the present-day Scandinavian languages
(bar Danish). Examples of long consonants
are cyssan ‘kiss’, settan ‘set’, siþþan ‘since’.

PHONOTACTICS Clusters existed in Old English which
are not permissible today. These were simplified in the Middle
English period chiefly by the reduction of clusters of /h/ or /w/ and
a following sonorant: hlāf ‘loaf’, wrītan ‘write’.
The other major phonotactic change is the simplification of onsets
consisting of a velar stop followed by an alveolar nasal (permissible
in German) gnagan ‘gnaw’,cnēo ‘knee’.
In nearly all these cases present-day orthography indicates the
former phonetic realisation.

OLD ENGLISH VOWEL SYSTEM Note the distinction
between two types of low vowels, front and back. Moreover, there are
four diphthongs in later Old English ea, æa [æa,
æ:a] and eo, ēo [eə,
e:ə] which were sensitive to the consonants which followed them.

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Old English phonetic system

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

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. The forms of the Dat. case of the
nouns hlaforde [‘xla:vorde], cyninge [‘kyninge]
used in the text and the Nom. case of the same nouns: hlaford [‘xla:vord], cyning[‘kyning].
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: a’risan – arise v., ‘toweard – toward adj.,
‘misdæd – misdeed n.

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

Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old
English

Sound changes, particularly vowel changes, took
place in English at every period of history.

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of
the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire
sets of vowels.

It should be borne in mind that the mechanism of
all phonetic changes strictly conforms with the general pattern. The change
begins with growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the
appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased variation, some
allophones prevail over the others and a replacement takes place. It may result
in the splitting of phonemes and their numerical growth, which fills in the
«empty boxes» of the system or introduces new distinctive features.
It may also lead to the merging of old phonemes, as their new prevailing
allophones can fall together. Most frequently the change will involve both
types of replacement, splitting and merging, so that we have to deal both with
the rise of new phonemes and with the redistribution of new allophones among
the existing phonemes. For the sake of brevity, the description of most changes
below is restricted to the initial and final stages.

Middle English phonetic system

•
Most unstressed vowels were reduced to the letter e [ǝ]:

e.g. OE talu > ME tale;

•
The unstressed OE [i] often remained unchanged in ME:

e.g. OE englisc > ME english;

•
OE [e] in unaccented prefixes often became [i]:

e.g. OE beforan > ME bifore;

•
Unstressed long vowels were shortened in ME:

e.g. OE dōm (wīsdōm) > ME dom (wisdom).

Vowels in the stressed position:

OE [ā] > ME [ō] (OE rād > ME rōd) (road)

OE [ǣ] > ME [ē] (OE sǣ > ME sē) (sea)

OE y, ӯ [ü] > ME [i], [ī ] (OE hyll
> ME hill)

•
A long vowel was often shortened before two consonants, OE cēpte
> ME kept

•
Short vowels a, e, o were pronounced longer
in open syllables: e.g. OE macian > ME māken (to make)

•
All OE diphthongs were monophthongized in the 11^th
century, having lost their 2^nd element:

e.g. OE ēō > ME ē (dēōp > dēp=deep).

Changes in the consonant system were not numerous.

•
Some new consonants were developed due to the process of palatalisation:

e.g. OE [sk’] > ME [ʃ] (OE scip > ME ship)

e.g. OE [k’] > ME [ʧ] (OE cīld > ME child)

e.g. OE [gg’] > ME [ʤ] (OE brycg > ME bridge)

•
Some sonorants became vowels and new diphthongs appeared. OE [ɣ]
(the letter g) turned into ME u, w [u, w]:

e.g. OE dragan > ME drawen=drauen.

•
So, new letters and diagraphs appeared to indicate new consonant
sounds. Some letters and diagraphs were introduced by French scribes to
indicate the existing sounds.

Writing in Middle English

The Middle English period can be taken to begin
with the Norman invasion of 1066 and the subsequent conquest of the whole of
England. Norman French replaced English as the language of the aristocracy and
the church. By the late 11th century the English higher clergy and nobility had
been replaced by French. In the Domesday Book (1086), a detailed record of land
property in England, proposed by William and carried out in his name, there are
virtually no English landlords mentioned — the higher echelons of English
society had been rid of the English. A consequence of this is that writing in English
only very slowly regains its position in society. There are some remnants of
Old English, such as the Peterborough Chronicle, with its final entry in 1154,
but these represent the dying throes of a written tradition now virtually
extinct. After this Latin and French are the languages of literacy. It is not
until the late 12th century that works in English slowly begin to appear again
— in a very different guise from the last works in Old English. This time
dialectal diversity, and not the koiné of a central region, characterises the
scene. For this reason it is appropriate to deal with the literary monuments of
Middle English according to geographical provenance.

Changes in Middle English
Spelling System

he striking change in the written language of England during the twelfth century was, to a considerable extent, a matter of mere spelling. As was pointed out in the preceding section, soon after the Norman conquest children ceased to be regularly taught to read and write English, and were taught to read and write French instead. When, therefore, the mass of the new generation tried to write English, they had no orthographical traditions to guide them, and had to spell the words phonetically according to French rules. They used ch instead of the old c, when it was pronounced as in cirice church. The sound of the Old English sc in sceamu shame, which did not exist at that time in French, was rendered by ss, ssh, sch, or sh. The French qu took the place of cp. The f between vowels (pronounced v) was replaced by u or v (these being still, as long afterwards, treated as forms of one and the same letter, used indifferently for vowel and consonant). The Old English symbol $$ was dropped, its place being taken by a or e. The sound of the Old English y, in the dialects where it survived, was expressed by u; and that of the Old English long u was written ou, as in French.
Of course these changes did not take place all at once. It is not to be supposed that no one ever read an Old English MS., and there was, for a long time, some mixture of the traditional spelling with the new one. Some few English sounds admitted of no tolerable representation in the French alphabet; and for the expression of these the native characters were retained in use. The letters, [char], [char] and [char] were used, though often blunderingly, even by scribes who, in other respects, were thoroughly French in their spelling; though often we find their sounds awkwardly rendered by t, th, ht, or d,and u. And in the twelfth century, though the continental variety of the Roman alphabet was generally used for writing English, it was found convenient to retain the native form [char] of the letter g for those two of its sounds that the French g lacked, namely, those of gh and y (as in year). A new letter was thus added to the alphabet, and, though it came to be written [char], exactly like the contemporary form of z, it preserved its name “yok” until the fourteenth century. It may be remarked in passing that the ambiguity of pronunciation of this letter has misled modern writers into calling the author of the Brut“Layamon” instead of “Laghamon”; the incorrect form, however, has become too well known to be displaced. In addition to the two original values of the “yok,” it very early obtained a third use, being employed (without indicating any change of pronunciation) instead of the Old English h in certain positions, as in kni[char]t, ibro[char]t, rou[char],for which the older spelling was cniht, gebroht, ruh. But, in the fourteenth century many writers substituted y or i for [char], when pronounced as in [char]eer (year), and gh in all other cases. In the thirteenth century, the letters [char] and [char] went out of use, the former being replaced by the northern French w. The letter p was retained; but, although it was still called “thorn” in the fourteenth century, it seems in Chaucer’s time to have been regarded as a mere compendium for th, which generally took its place except initially. It may be noted that Thomas Usk, in the acrostic sentence of his Testament of Love (1387) spells pin (thine) with the four letters THIN. The adoption of a number of French words like ioie (joy), in which i was pronounced like the modern English j,introduced the consonantal use of this letter into English orthography.
The Old English initial combination hl survived (written lh) in some dialects down to the fourteenth century; but hr was very early reduced to r. For the Old English hw,Middle English writers substituted wh, though the h was, at first, often omitted in this combination, as in other positions, by scribes of French education. The northern spelling qua, quilk for Wha, whilk (who, which) arose from a dialectal pronunciation of qu as wh,which still survives locally in a few words.
From the twelfth century onwards, the letter y, when used as a vowel, was treated as a mere alternative form of i
The Ormulum is written in a peculiar phonetic spelling devised by the author himself. This is based, to a considerable extent, on native tradition, though the handwriting is of the continental type. There are, however, some of the new features. Orm uses ch and shas we do now, and retains the Old English form of g for the two sounds which the French g had not. A device peculiar to himself is the appropriation of different shapes of the letter g to the two sounds in god (good) and egge (edge). But the most noteworthy characteristic of his orthography is the method of indicating the quantity of the vowels. The shortness of a vowel, in a syllable ending with a consonant, is shown by doubling the following consonant, as in Crisstenndom. When the short vowel ended a syllable in the middle of a word, Orm marked it as in t[char]kenn, and very often (though not always) indicated a long vowel by one, two, or even three “acute accents” over the letter. This elaborate and cumbrous system found no imitators, but, as preserved in the author’s autograph MS., it is one of the most important aids that we possess for ascertaining the English pronunciation of the time.

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Posted: Nov 21, 2006 21:11;
Last Modified: Dec 01, 2020 09:12

Although the Anglo-Saxons left no accounts of their metrical organisation, statistical and linguistic analysis of the poetic corpus has allowed us to come up with a good idea as to how their verse worked.

Like all early Germanic metres, Old English verse is accentual and alliterative. With very few exceptions, end rhyme does not play a structural role. And even when it is found, it never takes the place of alliteration (initial rhyme) in the earlier verse.

Stress and line division

The basic line consists of four stressed syllables and at least four lesser-stressed syllables (conventionally described as ‘unstressed’). A very strong caesura (metrical break) is found between stresses two and three. This caesura is so strong, indeed, that we tend to describe the verse in terms of half-lines: the half-line before the caesura is known as the a-verse or on-verse, the half-line after the caesura as the b-verse or off-verse.

In modern printed editions, on- and off-verses are separated graphically by a gap of three or four spaces, as in the following except from Cædmon’s Hymn (ed. O’Donnell 2005, adapted from the transcription of Tanner 10 [T1]):

Nu sculon herigean    heofonrices weard,
meotodes meahte,    ond his modgeþanc,
weorc wuldorfæder—    swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece drihten,    or onstealde!

Now we must honour the guardian of heaven,
The might of the measurer, and his thoughts,
The work of the father of glory—as he, the eternal lord,
Created the beginning of each of wonders!

In Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, poetry is written from margin to margin, as in the following facsimile (reproduction) and diplomatic transcription from the same manuscript (adapted from O’Donnell 2005)¹. While Anglo-Saxon scribes did not place each line of poetry on a separate line in their manuscripts, they often did mark line boundaries and caesuras with a raised point or other punctuation. There is also considerable evidence to suggest that they were aware of metre as they copied (see O’Brien O’Keeffe 1990 and O’Donnell 1996).

[ Approx. 28 characters omitted ] Nusculon herıgean heofon|
rıces ƿeard meotodes meahte ⁊hıs 〈mod〉geþanc ƿeorc|
ƿuldor fæder sƿahe ƿundra gehƿæs ee{c}e 〈a{d}〉rih〈t〉en or on|
stealde· he ærest sceop eorðan bearnū heofonto hrofe|
halıg scyppend· þamıddangeard moncynnes ƿeard ece|
drıhten æfter teode fın{r}um foldan frea ælmıhtıg· [ Approx. 3 characters omitted ]

Alliteration

The half-lines are tied together by alliteration. The rule is that one or both of stressed syllables in the on-verse must alliterate with the first stressed syllable in the off-verse. The second stressed syllable in the off-verse must not share in the alliteration. The following lines show the standard pattern of alliteration (alliterating syllables in bold):

meotodes meahte,    ond hıs modgeþanc,

weorc wuldorfæder—    swa he wundra gehwæs,

ece drıhten    æfter teode

Consonantal Alliteration

When the alliterating syllables begin with a consonant, the sounds must be identical. Hence s alliterates only with s, b only with b, and so on. This is also true of certain consonant clusters beginning with s: stressed syllables beginning with sp only alliterate with other stressed syllables beginning with sp, stressed syllables beginning with st only alliterate with other stressed syllables beginning with st, and stressed syllables beginning with sc alliterate only with other stressed syllables beginning with sc.

Two exceptions (though they may not look like exceptions to the beginning student) are stressed syllables beginning with the characters 〈c〉 and 〈g〉. For most of the historical period, these characters were used to represent two distinct sounds each: 〈c〉 was used for /ʧ/, the sound at the beginning of Modern English church (Old English cyric), and /k/, the sound at the beginning of Modern English king (Old English cyning); 〈g〉 was used for /y/, the sound at the beginning of Modern English yard (Old English geard), and /g/, the sound at the beginning of Modern English good (Old English gōd) (see Campbell 1959/1991, Chapter 1).² Except in the latest Old English poetry, however, poets do not distinguish between these sounds in their alliteration: stressed syllables beginning with the letter 〈c〉 alliterate with other stressed syllables beginning in 〈c〉 regardless of whether the sound being represented is /ʧ/ or /k/; likewise, stressed syllables beginning with the letter 〈g〉 alliterate with other stressed syllables beginning with 〈g〉 regardless of whether the letter stands for /y/ or /g/. Thus Old English cēap ‘bargain, purchase’ (Modern English cheap) alliterates with cyn ‘race, tribe’ (Modern English kin) in Beowulf 2482:

heardan cēape; Hæðcynne wearð

…a hard bargain; to Hæðcyn was…

More common is alliteration between /g/ and /k/ (e.g. as between begoten ‘covered’, golde (Modern English gold), and gimmas ‘jewels’ (Modern English gems) in The Dream of the Rood, 7:

begoten mid golde; gimmas stōdon

In the tenth-century or later, poets do distinguish between these sounds in their alliteration (see Amos 1980). Thus in the late poem The Battle of Maldon, 32, the 〈g〉 in gārrǣs ‘Spear-rush’ and gafole ‘tribute’ (both of which would be pronounced /g/) alliterate with each other, but not with the 〈g〉 in forgieldan, which would be pronounced /j/ (compare Modern English yield which shares the same etymology)³:

þæt gē þisne gārrǣs mid gafole forgielden

…that you repay this spear-rush with tribute…

Vocalic Alliteration

All vowels and diphthongs alliterate with each other (i.e. stressed syllables beginning in a can alliterate with stressed syllables beginning in æ, a, e, i, o, u, y, ea, eo, or ie). No distinction is made between short and long vowels or between vowels and dipthongs, and in practice better poets tended to avoid alliterating like vowels with like. It is for this reason perhaps better to understand ‘vocalic’ alliteration as reflecting the absence of consonantal alliteration than alliteration in its own right. Cædmon’s Hymn has three examples of vocalic alliteration:

ece drihten    or onstealde⁴

he ærest sceop    eorðan bearnum

ece drıhten    æfter teode

Accentual Patterns

Most half-lines in the Old English corpus belong to one or another of a limited number of accentual patterns. These patterns, which are traditionally called metrical types, are distinguished by the way in which the stressed, unstressed, and semi-stressed syllables are arranged.

Sievers types

Traditionally, there are said to be five major metrical types, organised according to a system first developed by Eduard Sievers, the late nineteenth-century German linguist who first identified them. The patterns (known as Sievers types) are named by letter, in descending order of frequency:

Type A: /×/×
Type B: ×/×/
Type C: ×//×
Type D: //×
Type E: /×/

(In this system of scansion, / is used to mark metrically stressed syllables, × is used to mark metrically ‘unstressed’ syllables, and to mark metrically ‘half-stressed’ syllables.)

Each of these types has a number of subtypes. These generally involve variation in the number of unstressed syllables or the replacement of an unstressed with a half-stressed syllable. Additional variants involve the placement of unstressed syllables before the first stress of Type A, D, and perhaps E lines (a technique known as anacrusis). A separate type of very long line—known as hypermetric and found particularly in the Dream of the Rood—is built along comparable principles. A useful beginning-level discussion of the various subtypes can be found in Pope and Fulk 2001, 129-158).

The following Modern English ‘poem’, initially popularised by Bruce Mitchell (see Mitchell and Robinson 2001, p. 165) but now updated by Rachel Hanks, can be used to help you remember the different types:

Type A (/×/×)	Anna angry
Type B (×/×/)	gave Bob the bold
Type C (×//×)	A Clear Kicking,
Type D (//×)	Dire, Death-bringing,
Type E (/×/)	Earth-rending End

Note that this poem is a mnemonic! It gets the stress patterns correct enough for you to remember broadly what they are.

Syllable Length

Whether or not a syllable is metrically stressed depends on its length, word-stress and clause-stress. Syllables can be long in three different ways:

long by nature
long by position
‘long’ by resolution

Long by nature

Syllables are long by nature when they contain a long vowel (marked with a macron in many textbooks and dictionaries). Stressed syllables that are long by nature (marked in bold) include:

wīc, ‘habitation, dwelling’
wēpan, ‘to weep’
hālig, ‘holy’

Long by position

Syllables are long by position when they are followed by two or more consonants in the middle of a word or one or more consonants at the word boundary. Examples, marked in bold, include:

giestas, ‘strangers’ (plural of giest)
eoh, ‘horse’
edg, ‘edge’

Resolution

Resolution is a purely metrical phenomenon where by short stressed syllables are counted as long if they are followed by an unaccented syllable that is not necessary for the metre; resolution is marked using a tie symbol: to connect the stressed and unstressed syllables. The following examples (bold) are all long because they can be “resolved” using the following (unstressed) syllable (italics):

metudaes maecti (stress pattern: /͜××/×)
ōr āstelidæ (stress pattern: /×/͜××)
heben til hrōfe (stress pattern: /͜××/×).

Resolution depends on the metrical context: some sub-types allow the present of short stressed or unstressed syllables. The following example, for example, does not show resolution:

on campstede (stress pattern: ×/̮×)

Word-stress

Primary stress

In Germanic (the ancestor of Old English and other languages like German and Dutch), primary stress fell on the first syllable of all words. In Old English, this rule is largely preserved, meaning that primary stress falls on the first syllable of all simple words and most compounds⁵:

unnytt, ‘useless’; giefu, ‘gift’; standan, ‘to stand’

The main exceptions (stressed syllables in bold) to this rule include

The prefix ge-, which is never stressed, on any part of speech, e.g. gehwǣs, ‘of each’; gesittan, ‘to sit’; gesceaft, ‘creation’.
Most ‘prefixes’ on verbs and adverbs, e.g. wiþsacan, ‘to refuse’; ætgædere, ‘together’.
_for_- and _be_- can be either stressed or unstressed on nouns: _forbod, ‘prohibition’ vs. forwyrd, ‘ruin’ (see Cambell 1959/1991, § 74).

Secondary stress

Secondary stress (italics) falls

on the second element of compounds(italics): wælsleaht, ‘slaughter’
on ‘heavy’ derivational suffixes after a long or resolved syllable: scieppend, ‘creator’; beorhtost, ‘brightest’ (see Campbell 1959/1991, §89).
on final syllables which become long on inflection: Hen[_ges]tes_, ‘Hengest’s’ (genitive singular); ōþerne, ‘other’ (accusative singular masculine).

Clause-Stress

Although every word in Old English has at least one stressed syllable, not all stressed syllables are equally prominent within the clause or sentence. As in Modern English, stressed syllables in nouns and adjectives tend to be more prominent than stressed syllables in pronouns or conjunctions:

Would an apple be as sweet?

On the other hand, words that usually take low sentence stress receive much heavier stress when they are out of position (compare the stress on I in the following):

I went up the mountain
Up the mountain went I

Stress and Word classes

In general terms, it is possible to classify Old English words in to three main metrical classes:

Always Stressed: nouns, adjectives, infinitives, participles.
Sometimes Stressed: finite verbs, adverbs
Rarely Stressed: conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, relatives

This metrical distinction reflects an underlying linguistic difference: words that are always stressed in Old English all belong to the open word-classes. Words that are rarely stressed all belong to the closed word-classes. The middle category, sometimes stressed involve categories that include words belonging to open and closed word classes.

Scansion of Cædmon’s Hymn

The following is a scansion of Cædmon’s Hymn using a modified form of the Sievers system. Letter names followed by a number (e.g. A-3 refer to common subtypes of the main five verse patterns. See Pope and Fulk 2001 for a detailed listing.

(A-3: ×××/×)	Nū scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard	(E: /‿××/)
(A-1: /‿××/×)	metudaes maecti end his mōdgidanc	(B: ××/×/)
(D-2: //(×)×)	uerc uuldụrfadur suē hē uundra gihuaes	(B-2: ××/××/)
(A-1: /×/×)	ēci dryctin ōr āstelidæ	(A-1: /×/‿××)
(B-1: ×/×/)	Hē āerist scōp eordu barnum	(A-1: /×/×)
(A-1: /‿××/×)	heben til hrōfe hāleg sceppend	(A-1: /×/×)
(B-1: ×/×)	thā middungeard moncynnæs uard	(E: /×/)
(A-1: /×/×)	ēci dryctin æfter tīadæ	(A-1: /×/×)
(A-1: /×/×)	fīrum foldu frēa allmectig	(D-1: //×)

Other scansion systems

The Sievers system is generally considered to be descriptively adequate but theoretically deficient by contemporary metricists. As a result, considerable effort has been devoted over the last half-century or so to developing alternative accounts of the metre. The most widely accepted alternative system currently is the stress foot system, developed and described most thoroughly by Russom. Its details are beyond the scope of this short introduction.

Works Cited

Amos, Ashley Crandell. 1980. Linguistic Means of Dating Old English Poetrical Texts. Cambridge MA: Medieval Academy.
Bliss, A.J. 1962/1993. Introduction to Old English Metre. Oxford: Blackwell. Reprinted in Old English Newsletter Subsidia 20. Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies.
Bredehoft, Thomas A. 2005. Early English Metre. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Campbell, A. 1959/1991. Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon.
O’Brien O’Keeffe, Catherine. Visible Song. Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
O’Donnell, Daniel Paul. 1996. “Manuscript Variation in Multiple-Recension Old English Poetic Texts: The Technical Problem and Poetical Art.” Unpubl. PhD Dissertiation. New Haven: Yale University. Available online.
O’Donnell, Daniel Paul. 2005. Cædmon’s Hymn: A Multimedia Study, Edition, and Archive. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
Pope, John C. and R.D. Fulk. Eight Old English Poems. New York: Norton, 2001.
Russom, Geoffrey. 1987. Old English Metre and Linguistic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Russom, Geoffrey. 1998. ‘Beowulf’ and Old Germanic Meter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sievers, Eduard. ‘Zur Rhythmik der germanischen Alliterationsverses.’ Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literature. 10:209-314, 451-545; 12:454-482.
Sievers, Eduard. 1893. Altgermanische Metrik. Halle: Niemeyer.

Notes

¹ For the conventions used in this transcription, see O’Donnell 2005, § ii.6.

² Many introductory textbooks distinguish between these letters, using 〈ċ〉 to spell /ʧ/, 〈ġ〉 to spell /y/, and 〈c〉 and 〈g〉 to represent the sounds /k/ and /g/ respectively. These letters are not found in the original manuscripts, however; they are a modern development.

³ If forgielden shared in the alliteration, the line would be unmetrical, since, as we’ve seen above, the second stressed syllable in the off-verse must not share in the alliteration. While the metre of the Battle of Maldon is unusual in many respects, the poet does seem to observe this constraint.

⁴ onstealde does not share in the alliteration because the accent falls on steal not on.

⁵ A thorough and accessible discussion of Old English word stress (from which this account largely is derived) can be found in Campbell 1959/1991, Chapter II.

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Источник

Word Stress

Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old English

Stress and line division

Alliteration

Consonantal Alliteration

Vocalic Alliteration

Accentual Patterns

Sievers types

Syllable Length

Long by nature

Long by position

Resolution

Word-stress

Primary stress

Secondary stress

Clause-Stress

Stress and Word classes

Scansion of Cædmon’s Hymn

Other scansion systems

Further reading

Works Cited

Notes

Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old
English