Stress in Old English, giet ongean

Abstract

The assignment of stress in Old English has been subject to a number of analyses that variously treat it as morphologically or phonologically determined. As versification shows, metrical structure is quantity-sensitive, hence the expected equivalence between ['H] and ['LL]. However, in addition to this, the language also permits word-initial ['LH] and ['L] feet. In this paper I argue that the assignment of stress in Old English was principally morphological, in that its assignment to a specific edge overrode the demands of metrical structure. Furthermore, a morphological analysis has a historical precedence because of the way in which stress assignment in Germanic developed. The morphologically determined stress system that Proto-Germanic inherited from Indo-European was predisposed to the assignment of initial stress. The stress shift in Germanic extended word-initial stress throughout the lexicon but did not affect the morphological basis of assignment. Old English inherited this system along with quantity-sensitive metrical structure. Assignment was complicated by the development of secondary stress, aspects of which such as the stressing of suffixes under secondary derivation, are irrecoverable