This site © 2007 by the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, CB3 9DP
Donka Minkova
University of California, Los Angeles
Email: minkova at humnet dot ucla dot edu
The study uses metrical evidence from Chaucer and Hoccleve to address the history of two long-term changes in English: inflectional syncope and functional stress-shifting. The familiar methodology of matching strong metrical positions to stressed syllables and weak metrical positions to unstressed syllables is extended to include bounding principles based on hierarchical prosodic phrasing. This new approach to the earliest English pentameter compositions recognizes the inversion of the strength of stress contrasts from the level of the lexical word upwards to the clitic group, the phonological phrase, and the intonational phrase. Drawing on the combined information provided by both stress and junction matching in the pentameter line, I propose more principled answers to some old puzzles in ME syllabic phonology:
A second area where this new methodology is proving helpful is the tracking of the noun-verb stress distinction in prefixed words (outláwe-óutlawe, óverthrow-overthrów, cóncord, concórd). Rapid demise of native prefixation, the influx of Romance prefixes, and the wide-spread variability of stress placement on recent loan-words hamper reconstruction based on prose evidence. Moreover, in the existing surveys, e.g. Halle and Keyser (1971), Nakao (1977), juncture boundaries and especially phrase-final filters are ignored and attestations at domain edges are lumped together with attestations within domains. A more sophisticated approach to matching linguistic to metrical units in Chaucer and Hoccleve allows us to examine and challenge Nakao’s (1977: 91) claim that in Middle English “There is little or no coherent correlation observable between prefixal stress and lexical categories.”
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