Abstract
This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the phonotactics of syllable rhymes based on all unique tokens in two Early Old French texts. Based on the data from this single, conservative variety, I develop Jacobs’ (1994) proposal that the Old French stress rule is underlyingly trochaic and that word-fiinal stress is caused by the presence of an empty-headed final syllable. I argue that this analysis can only be valid while words with final stress systematically end in a consonant that can, and often must, be parsed as the onset to an empty-headed syllable. Although this is not the case in most later varieties of Old French, the prediction is borne out by our data. I conclude by examining the implications of this analysis for the accentuation and phonotactics of monosyllables and for the study of prosodic change in Old French.
Highlights
Lexical stress in Old French (9 –13 century) shows a simple surface pattern: it is inal (1a), except where the inal vowel is a schwa, in which case it is penultimate (1b): (1) a. petit [pə.ˈtit] ‘small. ’ b. ensemble [ẽn.ˈsẽm.blə] ‘together’. This surface pattern persists until the apocope of inal schwa at the end of the 16 century, when stress becomes regularly word inal
While lacking the theoretical tools to formalize the observation, philologists and historical linguists have long recognized the importance of the development of group stress for French phonology
Pope (1952 [1934]), for example, identi ies a turning point between Early and Later Old French, dividing the historical development of the language into ‘Period I’ and ‘Period II’: The dominant factors in the evolution of pronunciation in Later Old and Middle French are the gradual lessening of the heavy tonic stress that characterised Period I and a new tendency to link closely together words closely connected in thought (Pope 1952: §170)
Summary
In one sense, this surface pattern persists until the apocope of inal schwa at the end of the 16 century, when stress becomes regularly word inal. This surface pattern persists until the apocope of inal schwa at the end of the 16 century, when stress becomes regularly word inal In another sense, it undergoes important changes during the Old and Middle French periods, as lexical stress is partially replaced by ‘group stress’, i.e. stress assigned not at the level of the prosodic word, but at the Thomas M. Pope (1952 [1934]), for example, identi ies a turning point between Early and Later Old French, dividing the historical development of the language into ‘Period I’ and ‘Period II’: The dominant factors in the evolution of pronunciation in Later Old and Middle French are the gradual lessening of the heavy tonic stress that characterised Period I and a new tendency to link closely together words closely connected in thought (Pope 1952: §170)
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