On the morphology of old english word stress

Lingua

93 (1994) 141-181.

141

North-Holland

On the morphology of Old English word stress* Fran

Colman

Depuriment of English Language.

University

of Edinburgh. David Hume Tower, George Square,

Edinburgh EH8 9JX. UK

Received

April

1993; revised version

July 1993

The controversy over phonological versus morphological bases for OE word-stress assignment is addressed. A distinction is made between stress at the utterance level and that at the level of a lexical item. The argument, word-stress

presented

is morphologically

logical conditions

in terms of a Dependency

sensitive

under which structures

framework,

at the lexical level, but subject may be built upon

is that Old English

to post-lexical

phono-

but not changed.

1. Some sources of disagreement Word-stress in Old English (OE) is associated with the root of a word. Inflectional suffixes are not assigned stress. So, in, e.g., guma ‘man’, the root represented by < gum > will be assigned stress, whereas the inflectional suffix represented by (nominative singular masculine) will not. Where the root is disyllabic, as in, e.g., heafod ‘head’, the word stress is associated with the first syllable. Problems arise, however, with word forms containing syllables which neither form part of the root, nor uncontroversially represent purely inflectional material: specifically, with affixed forms. As Mitchell and Robinson ( 1988 : $6) put it: ‘[s]ome say that bindende “binding” and timbrode “built” have a pattern like MnE “archangels”, not like “hastily”. But not everyone agrees’. Stress assignment for compound words can also give rise to controversy.

*

Some

aspects

of the analyses

presented

here

were

given

a brief

airing

at the

seventh

International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Valencia, September 1992. I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewers for Lingua for their attempts to smooth away some of the rococo parentheticals. They, as well as John Anderson and Heinz Giegerich, who have contributed to and borne the stress, are to be relieved of any further

0024-3841/94/$07.00 0 1994 SSDl 0024-3841(93)E0035-6

responsibility.

Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

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F. Colman I OE word stress

Disagreement over stress assignment within OE words seems to arise partly because of a lack of clarification of the parameters within which stress is to be assigned: that is, of whether what is at issue is a lexical level within which components of lexical items may be accorded different degrees of prominence, or an utterance level (whether or not any given utterance constitutes a sentence), by which lexical stress assignment may be adjusted. Given that metrical stress operates at the utterance level, and given the extent to which reconstructions of OE metre are invoked as evidence for OE ‘stress’ (see section 3.6 below), it is important that the different levels are distinguished. Yet accounts of OE stress often conflate the two - or do not give due consideration to stress at the lexical level. An appropriate distinction is implied, but without pursuit of its significance in this respect, in McCully and Hogg (1990: 333), where the first syllable of OE guma ‘man’, although metrically ‘light’, is accorded lexical stress, because a lexical word ‘must contain the head of a foot’ (or ictus: see section 2.1 below). My interest here is with stress assignment at the lexical level, rather than at the utterance one (though, of course, claims about the former should be tested against reconstructions of the latter). A major source of disagreement, however, is the role of (crucially derivational) morphological structure in stress assignment (at the lexical level, and thus, indirectly, at the utterance level - of which the metrical patterns form a subsystem, see section 3.6 below). In particular, the question is whether the bases for assignment of OE word-stress at the lexical level are primarily phonological or morphological. Controversy is reflected in different views emerging from analyses in frameworks of Metrical Phonology. Suphi (1985, 1988), for instance, argues that stress is assigned in the lexicon, accompanied by rules of word-formation, and is sensitive only to morphological criteria. McCully and Hogg (1990), McCully (1992), on the other hand, claim that OE stress is part of OE phonology, having only a very limited access to morphological information (see section 4.1 below). An exploration of some problems associated with each of these claims will be followed below by alternative analyses of relevant OE data, within a framework of Dependency Phonology. Particular attention will be given to problems concerning rules which are structure-changing (i.e., ones involving mutation), rather than structure-preserving (see section 4.2.3 below). But first, some preliminary clarification may be pertinent. Assumptions about OE (what may be reconstructed of the language, and on what evidence) often tacitly underlie published works on the subject. Many such assumptions are not always transparent to linguists concerned with other languages; but it is

F. Colman I OE word stress

143

also equally important that work on OE maintain a tradition of reassessing the bases for assumptions, and the terminology (involving theoretical claims) in which they are presented. Sections 2 and 3 below are offered in the light of these observations.

2. Some definitions

2.1. Stress and accent These terms are variously used, in discussions of both word-stress and metrical patterns. In the following discussion, a stressed syllable is one whose syllabic is associated with an ictus (foot-head). The phonological foot is taken as ‘the basic unit of rhythmic organisation, constituted by a stressed syllable and any unstressed to its right’ (Anderson 1986: 58; and see Abercrombie 1965). Feet are grouped into tone groups, ‘the stretch associated with a major tone shift’ (Anderson 1986: 59). An accented syllable has a syllabic associated not only with an ictus, but simultaneously with a tonic (tone-group-head). Figure 2(c), section 5 below, for instance, illustrates the function of the syllabic ([ae:] in the diphthong /%:a/) as the head of the foot, with the unstressed syllable to its right included in the foot. This stressed syllabic also functions as head of the tone group. The first syllable in < heafod > is therefore claimed to be both stressed and accented. Compare this with figure 3(c), section 5 below, where the syllabic [o] functions as head of a foot, but not of a tone group: the second syllable in < wisdome> is claimed to be stressed at the post-lexical level, but not accented. See section 5 below for further analyses invoking these definitions in Dependency notation. 2.2. Derivation vs. inflection Derivational morphology expresses relationships between words of different syntactically and/or semantically definable classes (or sub-classes) (e.g., between a verb and a noun, or a negative and a positive noun). Inflectional morphology is concerned with word-forms which may reflect syntactic relations (e.g. the relation between a verb and its subject or object, or between a preposition and its object), rather than derivational relationships between words.

144

2.3. Exponents

F. Colman

of morphological

I OE word stress

categories

In OE, both types of morphological categories may be expressed by affixation (for inflectional morphology this is typically suffixation), or by root modification: i.e., realisational alternation not predictable by phonological context, as in, for instance, plural forms of New English (NE) mutative nouns of the goose, foot type (this type of alternation is described as ‘allomorphy’ in some frameworks: see, e.g., Hogg 1992b: chapter 3). ‘Root’ here is taken as the indivisible morpheme conveying primarily lexical semantic properties. It may function as the stem for inflectional information, or as the base for derivational processes (in which case the resulting word-form is then available as a potential stem for inflectional information). In a word-and-paradigm model as adopted in the analyses in section 5 below (see Matthews 1974 : chapter VIII, Hogg 1992b : 122-l 24), morphological headhood is assigned to the root of a word (see further the discussion in section 4.2.2 below). Three types of derivational word-structures are identifiable for OE (as for NE). Simplex words consist of a single root (e.g., OE guma ‘man’); in complex structures, derivational information is added to a root by either affixation (e.g., OE huntop ‘hunting’; unright ‘unright, wrong’) or root modification (e.g., OE hryre, noun ‘fall’; cf. hreosan, verb ‘fall’); compounds contain two roots (e.g., OE riptima ‘harvest-time’). The expression of derivational and inflectional categories may overlap: that is, a single exponent may convey information which is simultaneously derivational and inflectional. The CO > in < timbrode > , 3sg. past timhrian ‘build’, for instance, represents a suffix marking a sub-class (II) of weak verbs. But it simultaneously conveys inflectional information, since it appears only in past tense (or participle) forms, therefore expressing, along with the dental suffix represented by , the inflectional category of tense. 2.4. Derivational

or injectional?

Identification of the function of a morphological exponent as derivational or inflectional (or both) in OE is not always uncontroversial. For instance, the form < onmiddan> is classified by both Davis (1953) and BosworthToller (1898) as representing a preposition, as in the phrase < onmiddan barn hwa%e> . By this interpretation, the suffix represented by is arguably derivational, marking a preposition formed from the noun midde

F. Colman 1 OE word stress

145

‘middle’. The dative case of the following noun phrase is presumably interpreted as governed by this preposition. But since also represents the dative suffix on weak nouns, the few recorded instances of may be analysed as a sequence of the preposition on plus a dativemarked noun (governed by the preposition). In the phrase just quoted, the following noun phrase can be interpreted as ungoverned, the whole roughly glossed as ‘in the middle with respect to the wheat’ (on ungoverned datives in OE, see, e.g., Colman 1991a; alternatively, < paem hwlete > might be governed by the noun form < middan>). Notable, too, are instances of < onmiddan> with a non-dative case-marked phrase, or no potentially governed noun phrase: e.g., (‘and in the middle it is of a whale’s shape’: Bosworth-Toller 1898: 685); < Forwrat he wyrm on middan> (‘He cut the worm asunder in the middle’: BosworthToller 1898: 326, 685). In such instances, Bosworth-Toller (the source of the preceding two glosses) prints < on > and < middan > separately, implying a sequence of two words. My conclusion is that < an > in < onmiddan > is better analysed as representing an inflectional suffix (unstressed). Similarly, derivational function might be assumed for the suffix represented by < urn > in < sceafmaelum > , given in Davis (1953) as ‘adverb’. But the fact that nouns inflected for dative may in OE have an adverbial function does not justify classification of dative-marked nouns with a major word-class other than noun. Again, I interpret as representing an inflectional (unstressed) suffix on this compound-noun form (roughly glossed as ‘in sheaves’). Conversely, forms most plausibly taken as representing derivational affixes have been interpreted as inflectional. McCully and Hogg (1990: 331), for example, base part of an analysis of OE stress on a claimed parallellism between the suffixes represented by < enne> and < ende> , and that represented by (the declensional suffix in < cyningas > , nom./acc. pl. ‘king’). That the first syllable of each of the former two may be assigned stress is cited as evidence that inflectional suffixes are not always unstressed. But < enne > , marking the so-called ‘inflected infinitive’, expresses a derivational relationship between a conjugation-class word (a verb, e.g., ridan, infin. ‘ride’) and the declension-class form (with case-marked < ne> , e.g., < ridenne > ) with restricted syntactic distribution, occurring only after to. The function of ), depends rather on the classification of participial forms in OE. That certain forms of past participles, in particular, express the number and case categories associated with OE declension-class words, suggests

146

F. Colman / OE word stress

that, at least in origin, participles were de-verbal adjuectives (Campbell 1959: §729: ‘The participles are fully inflected adjectives . ..‘). and that even if lexical stress is to be assigned to the first syllable in < ende > (whether on phonological grounds invoking syllable weight, as in McCully and Hogg 1990, or on morphological grounds, as in the lexical phonology framework of Suphi 1985), this is very tenuous evidence for stress on inflectional suffixes.

3. Some sources of evidence 3.1. Bases .for reconstruction The primary basis for reconstructing OE has to be the orthography, with reconstructions of (the selections of) the language it represents interpreted in the light of linguistic theory (or theories), and comparison with reconstructions of cognate languages, including subsequent Englishes (see, e.g., Colman 199lb: chapter 1). What follows gives merest intimations of the major types of evidence for Old English word-stress assignment, and problems associated therewith (for a concise list of ‘evidence for stress patterns’ see Hogg 1992a: $46). 3.2. Orthography The (roman-based) Old English orthography makes no overt distinction with respect to word-stress (the function of non-alphabetic diacritics, where they occur in manuscripts, is not systematically to be defined. See, e.g., Campbell 1959: $26; Hogg 1992a: $2.5; Ker 1957: xxxv). Reconstructions based on orthographic and other evidence for phonological and morphological patterns, however, allow for positing a two-way distinction reflected in certain restrictions on orthographic usage: that between vowels in stressed syllables and those in unstressed ones, the latter represented by a restricted set of the graphs available for the former (see, e.g., Strang 1970: 290). While < y> , , and digraphs representing diphthongs (see below), such as , , , are available along with , , co>, and for vowels of stressed syllables, only graphs from the latter ‘set’ normally appear for those of unstressed ones in inflectional suffixes (see further Anderson to appear; on < in > in unstressed inflectional suffixes in diachronically and diatopically restricted varieties see, e.g., Campbell 1959 :

F. Colman

/ OE word

stress

147

$369; Hogg 1992a: $6.49). So, even after the orthography is interpreted in the light of reconstructions of various levels of the grammar, it is still ambiguous with respect to stress, in its use of the , , -CO> , set. Moreover, for words which on other grounds might be assigned two tonics and two ictus (e.g., compounded forms such as sceafmd, see section 2.4 above), it gives no overt clue as to which of the two syllables may be the more prominent. Some evidence for enclisis, relevant to reconstructions of OE stress at utterance level (see Kuhn 1933: 2, 30), may be found in manuscript forms suggesting ‘contraction’ of two lexical items. Examples include < baette > (for < &et te> (= pat be, conjunction ‘that’): Suphi 1988: 181), , < cwistu> , (for ‘say you’: for these and more see Koopman 1992: 80-82). Forms which simply combine two full word-forms (such as < cwisthu>) are, however, not very convincing, given that principles of word-division in OE manuscripts seem to have been different from those conventional today. McCully’s (1992: 130-l 3 1) analysis of the sequence < brym gefrunon> ‘power (we) heard about’ (Beowulf 2b) as involving enclisis of ge to the preceding syllable, might find support from the not-infrequent separation of the sequence from the representation of the word-form to which it functions as a prefix. The manuscript Hatton 20, for instance, supplies (‘how blessed’), with a clear space between the prefix and the following sequence (see also Campbell 1959: $29). The encliticised forms may be assumed to have reduced stress. 3.3. Phonology Reconstructions of certain aspects of OE phonology invoke, in a not viciously circular way, reference to word-stress. For instance, as in NE, diphthongs (and long vowels) occur only in stressed syllables. Pre-OE diphthongisation processes such as breaking (Campbell 1959: §338; Hogg 1992a: $6.7) occurred only in stressed syllables. So a digraph representing a dipththong is a clue to stress. The function of vowel digraphs in OE has, however, long been a matter of dispute (for a summary, see Lass and Anderson 1975: 75-79; and more recently Hogg 1992a: 62.19ff.; on the operation of palatal diphthongisation as putative evidence for stressed syllables see Hogg 1992a: 52.84; on the controversy surrounding this ‘sound-change’ see Colman 1985, 1987.). Digraphs representing vowels in inflectional affixes occur after stemfinal consonants represented by , < g> , or < SC> : graphs ambiguous as to palatal or velar signification (see, e.g., Hogg 1992a: B2.50, 2.56, 2.64).

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F. Colman I OE word stress

Digraphs in forms such as < secean 1, < ecium > , < nerigean > , < adwgscean> (cf. < secan> , infin. secan ‘seek’, < ecium>, dat. pl. ece ‘eternal’, < nerigan > , infin. nerigan ‘save’, < adwascan > , infin. adwascan ‘quench’) are generally (even by proponents of palatal diphthongisation) interpreted as a sequence of diacritic, marking the palatal quality of the preceding consonant, followed by a graph representing an unstressed monophthong (Campbell 1959: §45). The glottal realisation ([h]) of the voiceless velar fricative /xi (represented by ) had a distribution mirrored in the defective occurrence of NE /h/: word- and, crucially, foot-initial. Foot-medial intersonorant /x/ had been lost in pre-OE. Compare, for example, the reconstruction of heah ‘high’, viz., [h%:ax], with an inflected form < hean > , [hae:an], historically derived from [ha:axan]. An intervocalic word-medial , therefore, is likely evidence of stress associated with the following syllable as in, e.g., in < behealdan> , infin. behealdan ‘behold’ (see also Russom 1987: 9). Note also in this example, the [ea] digraph representing a diphthong from pre-OE breaking. Realisations of three other OE voiceless fricatives, /f, 8, s/, are also sensitive to stress. Although voiced in phonetically voiced environments (e.g. /f/ -+ [v] intervocally in < heofon > , heofon ‘heaven’), the fricatives remain voiceless in word- and foot-initial position (for further details of the environments see Anderson 1988a; and see section 5 below). On the reconstruction of foot-initial and therefore voiceless [fl in, e.g., < befeallan > , infin. befeallun ‘befall’, see section 3.7 below. 3.4. Morphology Morphological analysis of the strings represented by the orthography may identify roots versus derivational affixes and stems versus inllectional suffixes. In the examples under 3.3 above, the sequence can be identified as representing a derivational prefix, in this case, one which signals a change in lexical-semantic class. Compare unprefixed < healdan > , < feallan > , representing respectively healdun ‘hold’ and fealfun ‘fall’; and cf. the occurrence of < be > before other verb forms, e.g. < beridan > , beridan ‘overtake by riding’ (cf. ridan infin. ‘ride’), < besprecan> , besprecan infin. ‘speak about, complain of’ (cf. sprecan infin. ‘speak’). The sequence recurs on verb-forms identifiable on other (e.g. syntactic) grounds as an inflectional suffix marking the infinitive. The roots of the forms are identifiable as represented by < heald> and < feall> . Realisational variants of the segments represented by th> and tf> are thereby associated with root-initial position; and

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F. Colman I OE word stress

given the reconstructions therefore to be associated

offered at 3.3 above, with a foot-initial one.

a root-initial

position

is

3.5. Syntax A basic concern of syntactic analysis is identification of the primary This has a significance for OE syntactic categories, viz., major word-classes. lexical stress assignment analogous to that of morphological analysis, in that both are necessary in an attempt to distinguish roots (which may function as independent words) and affixes (bound morphemes). Controversy surrounds certain OE orthographic strings which may represent either words or affixes, notably those such as < zefter> ‘after’, ‘with’, ‘to’, etc., whose arguable status in any given syntactic context is aptly summed up in the well-known section title in Mitchell (1985 : 440): ‘Prepositions, adverbs, prepositional adverbs, postpositions, separable prefixes, or inseparable prefixes?‘. The form , for instance, may be assigned a tonic (and ictus) at the lexical level if it functions as a preposition or an adverb, but not if it functions as a verbal prefix (on see further section 4.3.2 below). Syntactic analyses of certain items as clitics (notably Van Kemenade 1987, on pronouns; see further Koopman 1992, but also Colman 1991a) have had repercussions for analyses of OE verse patterns (Minkova and Stockwell 1992) which observation brings us to the next section. 3.6. Metrical

patterns

Reconstructions of the verse-types of OE are well documented. While different interpretations of the underlying metrical principles are available (see, e.g., Cable 1974, Pope 1942) the following (over-brief) account of the organisation of the verse, taken mainly from Bliss (1962: 11-12) illustrates the traditional position (based on Sievers 1893). Each ‘line’ of poetry consists of two ‘verses’ (‘a’ and ‘b’ verses). ‘[T]he normal verse contains at least four syllables: two syllables bearing full stress, and two or more syllables which are relatively weakly stressed’. At least two, and (normally) at most three, onsets of stressed syllables in each whole line alliterate: one from each verse (of three, the second alliterating onset must be in the ‘a’ verse). The metre is stress-counting, rather than syllable-counting. The classic Sievers’ ‘five types’ (labelled ‘A’ to ‘E’) set out the possible arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables within a verse.

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F. Colman

/ OE word stress

‘The Old English metrical system shows that many words had both a stressed and a half-stressed syllable’ (Campbell 1959: §87). This quotation is representative of the sorts of uses to which reconstructions of OE metre are put, in reconstructing aspects of the language. See also, for instance, the traditional interpretation in Campbell (1959: §47) of , sing. subjunctive ‘be’ as disyllabic because in Bede’s Seath Song ‘the metre requires two syllables’ (for an alternative view see Colman 1988: 150). And for another instance, note the application in Stockwell and Minkova (1992: 142) of the metrical principles informing Kuhn’s Laws of syntactic positioning to an argument that (pace Campbell 1970; Lucas 1987: 147), ‘there is a syntax common to verse and prose, with special conventions for verse, rhythmical or otherwise . . .‘. Despite various caveats offered by themselves, recent authors continue to give the impression that metrical reconstructions form the primary basis for hypotheses about OE stress. So, for instance: ‘the foundation for any modern study [of the phenomenon of stress in OE] remains the work of Eduard Sievers . . . well summarized in Campbell . . .’ (McCully and Hogg 1990: 3 I 5). But it would be obtuse, if not libellous, to fail to highlight the ensuing acknowledgement in McCully and Hogg (p. 3 15) that ‘Sievers’ work is restricted to the analysis of poetry . ..’ and of ‘a major lacuna in that the analysis of stress patterns in prose is largely lacking’. Nor should we consider the citation of ‘metrical and alliterative pratice’ in Hogg (1992a: 46) as evidence for reconstructing OE stress patterns in isolation from the remark that ‘however close the rhythms of OE poetry may have been to normal speech, the two sets of rhythms could not have coincided completely . ..‘. McCully (1992: 117) further emphasises the need to distinguish between metrical ‘lift’, and ‘stress’ assigned to syllables (see also Strang 1970, Suphi 1985). Indeed, McCully (1992: 126) explicitly states that the direction of evidence is not from metrical patterns to phonology (including suprasegmental) but vice versa: ‘if we are to find evidence for Old English verse prosody, then it seems we must proceed by looking at Old English phonology first, because the structures of that phonology, and the rules that govern them, both underpin and enable a particular metre’. Lucas (1987: 148) discussing the ‘internal displacement’ of to in the verse < Swa ic be wene to > ‘as I expect from you’/‘as I expect you to’ (Beowulf 1396b), aptly points out that ‘[i]t is the grammar of the language that tells us that without displacement of to the verse would read *SW ic be to wene’. It is this displacement which allows stress assignment to to, an item presumably otherwise unstressed at the utterance level (though, as I would argue, assigned stress at the

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lexical one). The distinction in Lucas (1987: 146147) between ‘verse grammar’ and the grammar of a language is an important one: the former is not ‘complete’ in the sense that the latter is ‘complete’. In sum, the verse represents only a limited selection of the language. Moreover, metrical patterns may ignore stress assigned at the lexical level (e.g., in monosyllabic words), and conversely, may erect ictus not assigned at that level. See, e.g., Campbell 1959: §89, fn. 1: half-stressed syllables ‘can discard their half-stress when internal if metre so demands’; and ‘... such syllables in final position can acquire some degree of stress when this is metrically convenient’. Relevant here, too, is the observation in Stanley (1975: 309) that while the prefix un is ‘usually stressed’ in Anglo-Saxon verse, it is not invariably so. The inference to be drawn is that the metrical (and related syntactic) patterns of verse cannot supply evidence for reconstructing all aspects of OE suprasegmental phonology. And as Lucas (1987: 145) points out, ‘[slince no contemporary accounts of early Germanic verse grammar have come down to us what we know about it has to be inferred from observation and analysis of the texts that do survive’. Furthermore, analyses of stress require clear distinctions between utterance (and subsets of utterance in verse) and lexical levels. Potential evidence of verse metre has to be kept in its place - as all other types have to be kept in theirs. Reconstructions of metrical patterns can at best support other types of evidence for reconstructing OE stress assignment at the lexical or utterance level (see further Colman 1988: 150-151). 3.7. Comparative

evidence

Data representing early Germanic languages cognate with OE provide a source of evidence for reconstruction for all levels of the grammar (on potential evidence for stress patterns from Gothic see, e.g., Russom 1987: 8; from Old Saxon, the detailed study in Lucas 1988 and the brief mention in Campbell 1959: §93, fn. 3). But reconstructions of OE are fruitfully to be tested also against those of the subsequent history of English, and against observations of extant varieties of the language. By comparison with NE reflexes of the forms < behealdan > and < befeallan> cited above, for instance, we may justify assignment of foot-initial status to the fricatives represented by < h > and < f> in the respective forms. Such reconstructions assume, however, an uninterrupted history of a whole word-form. NE earthly, for instance, might prompt a reconstruction of OE < eorhlic > with a stem-final voiceless fricative, at odds with the plausible claim for similarlypositioned voiced fricatives in OE < luflice> , (cf. NE lovely,

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F. Colman / OE word stress

wisdom: see section 5 below). But NE earthly may be a reformation after the period of OE fricative allphony, rather than a genuine reflex of the OE complex form.

4. Possible bases for lexical stress assignment 4. I. Phonological

or morphological

sensitivity?

Within the framework of metrical phonology, rival claims promote phonological motivation (McCully and Hogg 1990, McCully 1992) and morphological sensitivity (Suphi 1985, 1988) as the basis for stress assignment in Old English. Implicit in McCully and Hogg (especially 333) and explicit in Suphi (1985) is an acknowledgement that what is at issue is the formulation of stress rules for individual lexical items. In other words, the concern is with stress at the lexical, rather than the utterance, level. Nevertheless, each account is heavily based on stress assignment as extrapolated from reconstructions of verse metre, and presented in standard handbooks such as Campbell (1959). While neither account denies stress assignment to the roots of simplex words, each has a different view of stress rules for word-forms involving derivational affixes. The latter include prefixes on declensionand conjugation-class words, evidenced respectively by, e.g., andsaca ‘apostate’, orjanc ‘mind’ (with stressed prefixes), and ansacan ‘deny’, apencan ‘devise’ (with unstressed ones: examples are from Hogg 1992a: $2.88) as well as compounds. The status (as derivational or inflectional) and stress accorded to certain suffixes is also crucial to assessments of the arguments in favour of phonologically-based stress rules (see below). 4.2. Problems 4.2.1.

with morphological

bases for assignment

Compounds

Suphi’s (1985) lexicalist-based claim is that the OE stress rule applies to morphologically bracketed items. The application occurs in the lexicon, post syllabification, and is level-ordered, such that nouns and adjectives are affixed at level 1, verbs and adverbs at level 3, after the level 2 operation of the stress rule. This produces the required stressed prefixes on the former set of lexical items (andsaca, orjanc: section 4.1 above). The latter set (ansacan, apencan), affixed after the operation of the stress rule, retain stress on the root, rather

F. Colman 1 OE word stress

153

than acquiring any on the prefix, Such a synchronic analysis has its mirror in what Campbell (1959: 572) suggests as historical reasons for the different stress patterns for prefixes on the different word-classes. Whether or not the synchronic analyst finds this reassuring, some problems emerge from Suphi’s (1985) analyses, though I will suggest that they are not all as problematic as implied by Suphi, and suggested by McCully (1992: 121), whose criticism ‘it is an unattractive feature of Suphi’s quoted here invites examination: (1985) model in that it entails a loop device to handle inflection on compounds . . .‘. The data at issue here (cited from Suphi 1985: 153) are: (1) < < < < <

hadesmann > , ‘member of a particular order’ cildamassedag > , ‘children’s mass day’ cuaemen > , ‘kinsfolk’ searocraeft > , ‘artifice’ bryne-leoma > , ‘gleam of fire’.

These forms are interpreted by Suphi as compounds with inflected first elements, and as such, complicate the formulation of an OE stress rule in a level-ordered model. The problem, of course, is that inflectional suffixes should be attached after the completion of any word-formation rules: compare, for instance, forms such as < heahcyninges> , gen. sg. ‘chief king’, in which the inflectional suffix modifies the complete compound heahcyning. It is to accommodate the putative internally inflected compounds that Suphi (1985: 154), with acknowledged misgivings, reintroduces the loop device she previously eschewed (pp. 88-89) in her treatment of ‘stacked’ prefixes (i.e., more than one prefix attached to a single root. In section 5 below, I refer to these as ‘collocated prefixes’, in an attempt to avoid the implications of levelordering in Suphi’s lexicalist-based terminology.). I suggest, however, that alternative (and more plausible) interpretations of the data at (1) render the introduction of the loop unnecessary. One of these, tentatively suggested by Suphi (1985: 156), is that the inter-root material represents ‘some kind of derivational augment’; that is, a compositional (and therefore derivational) morpheme, commonly attested in compounds in OE and cognate languages (e.g. Present-day German; see also Hickey 1986: 365; Warren 1978: 35). Evidence from forms of personal names also is pertinent here: intra-word inflection in non-simplex names is implausible: see Colman 1984: 112-113, 1990: 85-86). In OE, however, morphemes identifiable as compositional are, to my knowledge, represented by vowels alone. While the in , for instance, may well represent a derivational

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F. Colman / OE word stress

morpheme, the in < hadesmann > looks undeniably like an inflectional suffix marking genitive singular. And, as Suphi (1985: 1533154) points out, the inflected first elements of these supposed compounds ‘may have any case ending . . . , always follow their declensional class, and may be singular or plural’, encouraging the conclusion that the forms indeed represent internally inflected compounds. But if the segments in question really represent inflections, then surely this is evidence that the forms at issue represent not compounds, but two separate words. Suphi’s ‘compounds with inflected first elements’ are, in short, either compounds uninflected internally (but with derivational morphemes indicating compound status), or not compounds at all (and recall my observations on principles of word-division in OE manuscripts in section 3.2 above). The loop is not necessary. 4.2.2.

Bracketing

Suphi’s (1985) analysis necessarily invokes lexical bracketing of compound and complex forms. Suphi (1988: 178) denies any ‘evidence in OE for distinguishing between compounding and affixation in terms of bracketing’. The prefixed form < andsaca> (cited in section 4.1 above) is bracketed as [[and][saca]], allowing the stress rule access to ‘the initial boundary of all morphemes’, such that, given the level-ordered rules, the noun represented surfaces with a stressed prefix. McCully (1992: 121), however, appeals to morphosyntactic headedness (which also invokes lexical-semantic headedness), arguing for the possibility of a bracketing as [and[saca]], on the basis of Allen’s (1980) ‘IS A’ condition, whereby AB = B (see also McCully and Hogg 1990: 322). For a prefixed form in particular, this bracketing seems not inappropriate as a representation of purely morphological structure. But the argument conflates headedness assigned on morphosyntactic and semantic criteria, with morphological and suprasegmental phonological structure. NE ballgame, for instance, is surely an AB = B compound; icecream could be analysed as either AB = B or AB = A. Compounds analysable as AB = C (e.g. silver-sh, underdog) presumably defy analysis in terms of morphosyntactic or lexical-semantic headedness. At the morphological (rather than syntactic of lexical-semantic) level, a compound, consisting of two roots, has two heads (or, rather, no dependency relation pertains between the components in the morphological specification: see section 5 below). But at the suprasegmental phonological level, the first element of the compound (whatever its classification on syntactico-lexical-semantic bases) is the more prominent: one of the morphological heads is not assigned headhood at the

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phonological level. Affixed forms will be assigned one morphological head, of the morphoassociated with the single root (i.e., in the representation logical structure, a dependency relationship is invoked between root and affix). The morphological head may or may not be associated with the head of the suprasegmental phonological level: in, e.g., mismanage, subscribe, it is: but in, e.g., mismatch, foreplay, it is not. There is not in English (Old or New) an isomorphic relationship between the head of a morphological structure and that of the phonological structure that realises it. While recognising a pervasive view of semantic-syntactic criteria for assigning head-hood to affixes (as determining the syntactic class of a word: e.g. Hoekstra et al. 1980: 19) I am arguing here in terms of a word-and-paradigm model of morphology by which morphological headhood is assigned to the root of a word (Matthews 1974: ch. VIII; and especially poignant with respect to OE, Hogg 1992b: 122-124). One might question the representation of morphological structure of prefixed forms in the bracketing in Suphi (1985, 1988); and this might seem to weaken the case for morphological sensitivity of OE word-stress assignment. I suggest, however, that morphological analyses nevertheless give insight into potential correlations between morphological and phonological structures (see further section 5 below). 4.2.3.

Zero syllables

What seems to me the most crucial drawback of Suphi’s (1985, 1988) mode1 is the invocation of word-internal ‘zero syllables’. As McCully acknowledges, zero syllables at word-boundaries can be phonetically motivated (see especially Giegerich 1985); but the worry is over their employment in word-stress derivation, by unwarranted insertion in the lexical structure of complex word-forms. (2) below shows Suphi’s (1985: 90-91) stress-asignment to andgiet ‘understanding’.

(2) A A s w s w [[and 01 Pre

Met 01

1 Root N

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F. Colman / OE word stress

Suphi’s Word Rule, which then gathers the feet erected by her Stress Rule into a right-branching tree, has to specify elimination of the internal zero-syllable. As McCully (1992: 122) rightly points out: ‘[tlhis rule is problematic insofar as it is structure changing’. In other words, the rule invokes ‘mutation’, and raises the question of what degree (or type) of abstraction the native speaker (and the linguist) is likely to tolerate. A claim resting on an abstract analysis involving mutation is less plausible than one invoking a concrete analysis involving structure building (i.e., an increase in specification; see further Colman 1992: 245-248; Anderson 1988b; Anderson and Ewen 1987: 294). In this instance, the ‘mutation’ involves deletion of a presupposed underlying zero-syllable. The case for morphological sensitivity of OE word-stress would be happier if based on formulations involving not structure changing, but structure building. Specifically, it will be more convincing if it can be shown to involve an increase in specification of structure, with some surface reflection of the condition for the increase, and therefore greater transparency. I suggest that the drawback of Suphi’s model springs from the framework itself: a framework built on binarity, in which S and W are relative indicators, each meaningless without the other. But in advance of an alternative analysis, the question of what may be reconstructed as ‘underlying’ - and of what type of ‘abstraction’ is tolerable ~ brings me to what I find the least comfortable part of the analyses of McCully and Hogg (1989) and McCully (1992). 4.3. Problems 4.3.1.

with phonological

bases for assignment

Abstraction

The argument that OE word-stress is phonologically based rests to a not minor extent on suffixed forms (see also section 4.3.2 below on certain prefixed ones), notably those including the sequence < ode > . The forms at issue are < timbrode> , past sing. timbrian ‘build’; < bifode> , past sing. < heafode>, dat. sing. heafod ‘head’. The two verbs forms bzjian ‘tremble’; have been considered problematic with respect to attempts to provide a phonological basis for stress assignment: according to traditional accounts, the former ‘bears secondary stress on its medial syllable; the second example does not . ..’ (McCully 1992: 124, following Campbell 1959: 34-35). This difference is accounted for in terms of phonological ‘weight’: ‘the crucial structure is found in the rhyme of the leftmost foot’ (McCully and Hogg 1990: 332). But the difference is one formulated on the basis of metrical analysis;

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I OE word stress

157

and what syllable may or may not be assigned secondary stress in the representation of (a limited set of) utterances in OE verse does not constitute primary evidence for reconstructions of stress assignment at the lexical level. Even if the syllabic represented by co> in both forms were to be assigned an ictus at the lexical level (though my analysis in section 5 would not claim this), the metrical structure may simply ‘ignore’ a lexically assigned ictus. Recall, too, McCully and Hogg’s 1989: 333 acknowledgement that ‘[a]s a lexical word, [guma] must contain the head of a foot’, contrary to metricalbased stress assignment (see section 1 above). A problem of a different order, however, is posed by the noun form < heafode> ? assumed by McCully and Hogg (1990: 331) to be structurally analogous with the verb form, as represented in their bracketing as follows: ‘[[timbrodle], [[bifodle], [[heafodle]‘. Under the operation of McCully and Hogg’s OE Stress Rule, the last form should have ‘secondary stress’ on its second syllable. But, as the authors point out (p. 332): ‘the normal form of the word in OE is heafde . . . . this syncopation . . clearly indicates that the medial vowel was unstressed’. The solution is one which invokes a nonconcrete abstraction (see section 4.2.3 above). In short, it relies on positing a synchronically underlying long /o:/ in the verb forms (distinct from the noun, with short /o/). At this point I take up the invitation in McCully (1992: 125) to object that ‘this analysis employs non-synchronic material criteria to gloss what is essentially a synchronic problem’: McCully (1992: 125) invokes the use in Beowulf of ‘non-synchronic metrical values’. Forms plausibly assumed to represent verbs with stem-internal diphthongs (such as < hean>, weak inflected adj. form ‘high’, , infin. ‘draw, pull’) or monophthongs (such as < fon > , infin. ‘receive’) are apparently required by the metre to have disyllabic stems, reflecting historically underlying forms with an intersonorant velar fricative ([hazaxan], [te:oxan], [foxan] respectively: see section 3.3 above). But I am not convinced that any ‘right to employ metrical values of an earlier age’ attributed to a poet (Russom 1987: 40-41) constitutes evidence for the speaker’s access to the historical (etymological) source of a vowel in any given lexical item. (Many native speakers of English, for instance, have to be advised of a semantic and morphological relationship between, e.g., profound and profundity before they can begin to understand what generative phonology may have been worrying about.) Moreover, while inflected forms of heafod normally lose the unstressed /o/, those of paradigmatically related nouns with light stem syllables retain it: so, then, the sequence e.g., < werode > , dat. sg. werod ‘troop’. Synchronically, represented by in < werode> pairs phonologically with that in

F. Colman I OE word a-em

158

< bifode> ; but no recourse to underlying long lo:/ may be had to account for the retention of lo/ in the noun form. Historically, of course, the retention in both forms may be attributed to the regular failure of the high-vowel deletion by which final unstressed /u/ (from which the /o/ derives) was lost only after a heavy-syllable stem (see Campbell 1959: §345). But for a synchronic account of Old English word-stress, a purely phonological analysis, apparently necessarily invoking underlying vowels, would demand that < werode > and < bifode > shared underlying lo:/, or alternatively that they shared underlying /u/ (on Keyser and O’Neil 1985 and high vowel deletion see Hogg 1992a: §6.18, fn. 1). If unconvinced by this synchronically ‘underlying’ long /o:/, we can revise the bracketing of the three forms in McCully and Hogg (see above), to take into account the different morphological structures. With the bracketing model of Suphi (1985), the two verb forms (weak class II) are plausibly analysed as [[[[timbr]o]d]e] and [[[[biflo]d]e] respectively, with < o > representing a derivational morpheme simultaneously expressing inflectional material (see section 2.3 above). The in < heafode> is root-internal (and hence more susceptible to reduction and loss), in a structure bracketed as: [[heafodle]. Once we revise the bracketing to accord with derivational morphological material, an account of the difference between the verbal and nominal forms need not invoke implausible abstraction - rather it may have recourse to derivational morphological salience (see the discussion of figure 3, section 5 below). 4.3.2.

Extrametrical prefixes

The phonologically-based account of McCully and Hogg (1990) rests also on observations about prefixes: specifically on verbs. Verb prefixes are typically unstressed in OE, as, for instance, in onsacan ‘deny’. But the analysis of McCully and Hogg claims a left-edge stress rule, thereby predicting stress assignment to the prefix on. To avoid such assignment, McCully and Hogg invoke extrametricality for the prefix: an extrametricality sensitive not only to the left-edge of a word, but ‘also morphologically defined’ (p. 324). That is, verb prefixes, as extrametrical, are not assigned stress. Certain OE forms are, however, often analysed as representing prefixed verb forms in which the prefix is assumed to carry ‘primary stress’. For instance, < zefterspyrian > , interpreted as representing a single word, afterspyrian ‘enquire’ (lit. ‘afterfollow’ [FC]), appears as potential counter-evidence to the claim that verbal prefixes are extrametrical. McCully and Hogg (1990: 324) suggest a phono-

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logical regularity for non-extrametical prefixes, by claiming that all such prefixes are disyllabic, thereby apparently furnishing a ‘phonological restriction on a morphologically based rule’ (p. 324). This is not, however, supported by forms such as < bistandan > , infin. ‘stand by’, < inngangan> , infin. ‘enter’, < tolicgan > , ‘lie near’, cited as having ‘primary stressed’ prefixes in the very sections of Campbell (1959: §§78-80) to which McCully and Hogg (1990: 324) refer (note also, the well-documented uncertainty as to the interpretation of pre-verbal forms such as < aefter> as representing prefixes, postpositions, or adverbs, in, e.g., Colman 1991a). 4.3.3. A structure-changing

rule

McCully (1992) appropriately questions a rule of stress assignment that involves zero-syllable deletion, as one involving structure-changing (see section section 4.2.3 above). But McCully’s analysis itself requires the erection of a ‘unary foot’ on a form which subsequently undergoes a ‘post-cyclic rule of Final-Destressing’, as exemplified by his analysis of the suffix represented by < ing > in < aeheling > , @cling ‘prince’ (p. 123). One could argue that just as McCully objects to word-internal zero-syllable deletion as structure-changing, so might we object to ictus-deletion as structure-changing. Certainly, the latter is not a rule of an optimal structure-building type (see again section 4.2.3 above). 4.3.4. Inflectional

vs. derivational

The probable distinction between the functions of the suffixes represented by , and by < ende> and , as inflectional and derivational respectively, has been discussed in section 2.4 above. Ignoring the derivational status of the first syllable in each of the two latter forms undermines the case of McCully and Hogg (1990) for a primarily phonologically-based account of OE word stress. There are problems, then, with accounts of OE stress assignment, as presented in terms of frameworks of lexical/metrical phonology. The problems are not all of the same status: but all have to do with variable interpretations of the available data. The following section introduces yet another formulation of rules governing lexical stress assignment in OE.

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F. Colman 1 OE word stress

5. Alternative analysis In contrast to the phonologically-based (1990) and McCully (1992) I claim that

analyses the initial

of McCully and Hogg (lexical) information to

which OE stress assignment rules have access contains only morphological structure, associated with segmental information (a string of contrastive segments); but that the resulting structures may be built upon under certain morphological and phonological conditions. The rule for OE word stress (OEWS) based on these claims, as given in (3), is deliberately parsimonious: ictus are assigned to non-root syllables only as required by morphologically and phonologically determined conditions. This differs from Suphi’s (1985, 1988) assignment of lexical stress to all derivational morphemes (see section 4.2.1 above). (3) Old English Word Stress (OE WS) (i) Associate a syllabic with each vowel not immediately preceded by an intra-morpheme vowel (i.e., not to the second segments of long vowels or of diphthongs. I take syllabic realisation of consonants as subsequent low level realisations, and so not assigned a syllabic at this stage.). Subsequent assignment of tonic and/or ictus operates from left to right. (ii) Assign a tonic to the first syllabic of any root, and of any prefix restricted to declension-class words. The prefix represented by < ge > , attached to both declensionand conjugation-class words, is thereby excluded. On that represented by < un> , see the discussion of figure 5.i.(c) below. Any tonic will automatically be simultaneously the head of a foot (i.e., simultaneously an ictus: see section 2.1 above). (iii) For non-tonic-bearing syllabics, attach each to an ictus node to its left: i.e., an unstressed syllable looks for a governor to its left. Failing an immediately preceding ictus, then (a) erect an ictus over the syllabic immediately preceding. An ictus may be erected only on a derivational morpheme (not an inflectional one), and only if the root (functioning as the base: see section 2.3 above) is ‘heavy’ (see below). A derivational morpheme may be governed only by a root; an inflectional morpheme may be governed by a root or by a derivational morpheme. (This necessarily applies only to suffixes, and to the second syllabic of any disyllabic prefix: declension-class prefixes have already been assigned an ictus to their first or only syllabic; prefixes not assigned an ictus cannot, by definition, find an intra-word root to their left. See the

F. Colman I OE word stress

161

discussion of figure 6 (a) below.) If these conditions are not met, then (b) attach the ‘stray’ unstressed syllable to a ‘super’ ictus node above the root ictus node. While aware that acceptance of these conditions smacks of over-reliance on the sorts of metrical ‘evidence’ questioned in section 3.6 above, I hope that a theoretical analysis invoking them may test both the theory in which the analysis is framed, as well as the aptness of interpretations of the metrical data. And my borrowing of the term ‘heavy’ here is not to ignore controversies over whether VC functioned as ‘heavy’ or ‘light’ in OE: it’s just that I am not sure that this is relevant to the present experiment, since at the lexical level any VC root will be assigned a tonic (even if this may be ignored in certain metrical structures, while exploited in others: see, e.g., the treatment of < mon on mode > in McCully 1992: 120, pace Lass 1984: 250ff.). The experiment takes somewhat at face value what are presented as ‘facts’ in the handbooks, insofar as the phonological conditions for post-lexical ictus assignment on a derviational morpheme require a preceding VCC ([hunt] in huntop ‘hunting’), V:(C) ([wi:s] in wisdom ‘wisdom’); or VCV ([a&l] in a$e/ing ‘prince’). These structures are commonly referred to in terms of syllable structure. So, for instance, for Campbell (1959: $91) ‘half-stresses’ are assigned to the derivational morphemes represented by < ing > in < achelinges>, gen. sg. ‘prince’, in < sealfode> , 3sg. past ‘salve, anoint’, in < singende> , pres. part. ‘sing’, in < huntohe>, dat. sg. ‘hunting’, because they are preceded by a ‘long syllable or its equivalent’. The same morphemes in , gen. sg. ‘king’, < wunode> , 3sg. past ‘dwell’, < wesende> , pres. part. ‘be’, < farohe>, dat. sg. ‘shore’, are not assigned ‘half-stress’. Plausible syllablification of many of the ‘half-stressed’ forms in question would not, however, support the characterisation of the relevant syllables as long. In < sealfode > , < singende > , and < huntohe > , principles of initial maximalism (see below) would consign only one of the root-final consonants to the first syllable: the sequence VCC does not characterise the structure of that syllable. That what seems to be crucial is the weight of a morphological unit (the root, functioning as a base), rather than of a syllable, is significant for what I will identify as ‘the ambisyllabicity problem’. Plausible principles determining syllabification are those of initial maximalism (see, e.g., Pulgram, 1970) and of ambisyllabicity (Fallows 1981; Colman 1983; Anderson and Ewen 1987: 6469, 82-84). In a model such as that of Suphi’s (1985) analysis, operating in terms of the syllable, syllabifi-

162

F. Colman I OE word strm

cation is ordered before the stress rule, at a level at which maximal syllable onsets can be determined. But since the assignment of ambisyllabicity is sensitive to stress (ambisyllabic consonants occur only after short stressed vowels), it must necessarily be ordered after the stress rule. Suphi (1985: 4) therefore has to suggest ‘a possible surface resyllabification which would be sensitive to such features as stress (thereby allowing for some surface ambisyllabicity)’ (see also p. 69, p. 283 fn. 7). In short, then, syllabification has to be broken up into two stages. But this can be avoided if no syllabification is required before the operation of the stress rule. In a Dependency framework, the appropriate segments in the initial representation are associated at the first stage of the stress rule simply with syllabics: a node is erected over the head of each syllable, and then over the head of each tone group (i.e., over the syllabic associated with a root or a noun prefix). This can be generalised in terms of the following observation: those nodes which are typically left-modified (tonics and syllabics) are those erected initially. The suprasegmental nodes typically right-modified (that is, ictus, and, within the syllable, rhyme nodes) are inserted automatically where dependent by subjunction (every tonic is simultaneously an ictus, and every syllabic is simultaneously a rhyme-head). But conditions are required for both tonics and syllabics to have adjoined dependents: erection of an ictus to the right of a tonic requires a preceding heavy base, and erection of a coda to the right of a syllabic is phonotactically determined (see the schematic illustration of the alternating patterns in figure 1). Syllabification (the demarcation of syllable boundaries) occurs after the operation of the stress rule. By starting with identifying the head of each unit, a Dependency framework does not enforce any syllabification at the outset. And as long as no data contradict, ictus assignment to derivational morphemes need not demand syllabification on any basis before the operation of the stress rule. It seems that what has to be ‘heavy’ in this context is the root (base) morpheme, and not what may or may not end up within the boundaries of a syllable. Initial syllabification is not required. Nevertheless, it might be wise at this point to pre-empt any objection on the basis of reconstructions of OE phonology with respect to which phonological boundaries have been invoked. One reconstruction concerns low-level word-internal realisations of the fricatives /f, 8, s/. As briefly mentioned in section 3.3 above, an account of the contexts in which these were realised as [v, 6, z] respectively, seems to appeal to the position of the fricative in the foot initial /f/ realised phonological foot. Recall < befeallan > , representing as [fJ, despite its inter-sonorant position. In word-initial and -final position,

F. Colman / OE word

Fig.

stress

163

I

(Tonic) 4

(Ictus) (Syllabic)

(Rhyme-head)

and when contiguous with a voiceless segment, the relevant fricatives remained voiceless (e.g., inpod ‘flood’; bus ‘house’; eft ‘again’). But they have voiced realisations ‘medially in words between voiced segments and provided a foot boundary does not immediately follow . and a morpheme boundary does not immediately precede’ (Anderson 1988a: 92). This account neatly captures the distinction between suffixed forms such as wynsum ‘pleasant’ (‘winsome’) and wilsum ‘desirable’ (with voiceless [s]) and those such as dysig ‘foolish’ (‘dizzy’) and verb bapian ‘bathe’ (with voiced [z] and [a]): in the former pair the fricative represented by < s > is preceded by a morpheme boundary; in the latter, < s> and < p> represent fricatives preceding the boundary. That the morpheme-final fricatives in the latter pair are voiced, while those in e.g., the prefixes of the verb forms mishdan ‘mislead’ and wijhdan ‘lead away’, while preceding a morpheme boundary, are nevertheless voiceless, is attributed to the foot boundary immediately following mis and wij. Recourse to foot boundary (and therefore syllable boundary) is, however, unnecessary, as deducible from Anderson’s (1988) important association of ‘foot-initial’ with ‘root-initial’. The relevant boundary is not phonological, but morphological : the fricative remains voiceless if followed by a root (associated not only with an ictus, but a tonic). Another type of reconstruction to be considered is that by which principles of syllabification appeal to phonotactic constraints. Such constraints may appear to call into question the assignment of an ictus to derivational affixes following heavy stems. Relevant here is the ban on short stressed vowels in open syllables. Assignment by OEWS of an ictus to the derivational morphologically salient /i/ in, e.g., < sealfian>, infin. ‘salve, anoint’, might be thought to predict a surface long realisation for this vowel. That the sequence < ian > represents two morphemes suggests a syllable boundary after the /i/ (see Colman 1988). In short, hypotheses about syllabification might be called

164

F. Colman 1 OE word stress

upon as arguments against aspects of OEWS. But the ban on open syllables with short vowels applies only to those whose ictus are assigned automatically as a result of tonic-assignment, and not to those assigned ictus on the basis of morpho-phonological criteria. Syllabification need not, therefore, impinge on the procedure of OEWS. In the presentation of the following analyses, in terms of Dependency theory invoking head-modifier relationships at both the morphological and phonological levels, association between the levels of segmental and suprasegmental phonology, and between the latter level and that of morphological structure, is indicated by broken lines. As is also conventional, within a single grammatical level, subjunction is indicated by unbroken verticals, adjunction by unbroken obliques. Categorial information (major word-class) is not given in the tree-analyses here. Note, too, that ‘schwa’ is given for non-back unstressed vowels in the initial lexical segmental representation, despite the obvious requirement that stress assignment precede specification of the surface segment in unstressed syllables. But space does not allow for elaboration on putative initial vowel values: the presentations here are deliberately elliptical. Abbreviations in the figures are to be expanded as follows: MS = morphological structure; T = tonic; I = ictus; S = syllabic. Figure 2 illustrates analyses of forms of morphologically simplex words: (a) < scip> ‘ship’; (b) < guma> ‘man’; (c) < heafod > ‘head’; (d) < heafade> , dat. sg. ‘head’. Working upwards, each form in the post-lexical analyses of figure 2 (a)-(d) is assigned its syllabic(s), and then a single tonic (associated with the single root of the simplex word), automatically associated with an ictus. Any other syllable is either inflectional (/a/ and /a/ in (b) and (d) respectively), or root-internal (/o/ in (c) and (d)), and so not a candidate for ictus assignment at the post-lexical level (whatever conditions may pertain). The inflectional suffixes, looking for their left-hand ictus, find /rum/ in (b), and the disyllabic ictus in /xae:afod/ in (d) (on the root-internal /o/ of the latter see the discussion of figure 3 (h) below). Figure 3 concerns the following forms: (a) < huntoP> ‘hunting’; (b) , dat. sg. ‘wisdom’; (d) < Ebelinges>, gen. sg. ‘prince’; (e) < timbrode> , 3sg. past ‘build’; (f) < cyning > ‘king’; (g) < cyningas > , nom./acc. pl. ‘king’; (h) < bifode > , 3sg. past ‘tremble’; (i) < menniscnes > ‘incarnation’; (j) < menniscneses > , gen. sg. ‘incarnation’. The analyses in figure 3 (a) to (h) illustrate the operation of the rule in accordance with the traditional conditions under which so-called ‘half-stress’ is assigned to derivational suffixes in complex word-forms. The uninflected forms in (a) and (f) have no unstressed inflections looking for an

165

F. Colman / OE word stress

Fig. 2. Simplex words Post-lexical

Lexical (a)

MS

MS

o

P

T I S

(c)

MS

/x ie:u (d)

MS

o

f o d/

MS

lx 2e:af o d a/

1

?

F. Colman I OE word stress

166

ictus to their left, and therefore no motivation for the derivational morphemes (/oe/ and /my/ respectively) to acquire one. The addition of an inflection requires erection of an ictus on those derivational morphemes that follow VCC (b) and (e), V:(C) (c), or VCV (d). (In analyses of forms with two ictus, the first of which is adjoined to the tonic, the I, node is introduced to preserve the non-language-specific generalisation that the tonic is necessarily left-modified: compare figure 5.ii. (a) and (b), also with two ictus, but in which the second is adjoined to the tonic.) No ictus is assigned to the derivational morphemes in figure 3 (g) and (h): the root syllables do not fulfil the appropriate phonological conditions. Fig. 3. Complex

and derivational

suffix

Post-lexical

Lexical

/xuntoea/

F. Colman I OE word stress

(~1 MS

(4

MS

$ /w i: s d

o m

161

a/ MS

MS

%-

/zeal

i nyas/

/t i m b r o d

a/

It i m b

r

dd

a/

F. Colman / OE word stress

168

(0

MS 6

/k y n i n r/

lk Y n i n rl

63

MS

MS

$ T sup I I

S

MS

,

I

I

I

,

/kyninyas/

/kyninyas/

(h)

I

MS

LY

T sup IO I S

/b i f o d a/

I t I /b i f o d a/

F. Colman

(i)

169

/ OE word stress

MS

MS

6T

sup I

S I I ,

/menniJnas/

0)

MS

I

,

i

, ,

/mennijnas/ MS

F

T 12

S /mennijnasas/

Figure 3 (e) and (h) are included with the specific (and uncontroversial) claim that the /o/ realises a derivational morpheme: the different ictus assignment is the result of the phonological structure of the preceding root (here functioning simultaneously as base and stem; see section 2.3 above). Notice, however, that the post-lexical phonological analysis of figure 3 (h) mirrors that of figure 2 (d), despite the different morphological structures. It is in this difference, and not one in the phonology, that the clue to the apparent ‘problem’ (section 4.3.1 above) of < heafde> vs. < bifode> lies: the morphological salience of the /o/ of the verb form accounts for its relative tenacity, compared to the root-internal (and morphologically insignificant) /o/ of the noun form, (Consider the morphological control on the behaviour of schwa in the history of English: see especially Minkova 1991: 81.2 and passim; and see, too, the persuasive presentation of evidence for the ability of

170

F. Colman I OE word stress

the OE morphological paradigm as a linguistic domain to ‘control, cause or restrict particular instances of linguistic change’ in Hogg 1992b: 124. Just as morphology may override patterns of diachronic variation, it may also account for apparent synchronic phonological anomalies.) Despite the historical origin of the root-internal unstressed vowel in < heafod> as /u/, the non-early OE nom. sg. form < heafod> prompts /o/ for the synchronic preword-stress inflected form. This choice is further supported by the plural form < heafodu> (Campbell 1959: @345, 353; Hogg 1992a: 96.214.3). Figure 3 (i) and (i) represent applications of the rule to forms with more than one derivational suffix. In (i), no inflectional syllable looks for an ictus on jnasl. /nas/ cannot ‘ask’ /is/ to acquire an ictus, because, as a derivational morpheme, the former suffix can only be governed by a root (functioning as a base). In (j), however, the inflectional syllable looks for an ictus on /nas/. At the post-lexical level, the phonological structure is built up to contain two ictus. The resulting phonological structure is analogous to that for (d), despite the different morphological structures. Before turning to word-forms derived by compounding, I will stress again that any change effected by the rule is structure building, not structure changing (pace Stockwell and Minkova to appear, who question how a syllable can ‘acquire’ stress). The representation of a compound in figure 4 (a) (< riptima > ‘harvest’) reflects a straightforward interpretation of a compound as combining two roots. Two tonics and two ictus are therefore assigned. Given the assumed prominence of the leftmost element, however, the structure builds a higher tonic node over the left-hand tonic. The representation captures the difference between an inflected compound (figure 4 (a)) and an inflected suffixed form (figure 3 (c)). At the morphological level, no dependency relationship pertains between the two elements of the compound (compare the dependence of the suffix on the single root in figure 3 (c)); at the first stage (at which tonicassigment is purely morphologically determined), only one tonic and one ictus are assigned in the suffixed form; and although the phonology subsequently erects another ictus, this is a modifier of the single tonic. ‘nightingale, night singer’) illustrates a Figure 4 (b) (< nihtegale> compound with a compositional vowel: the medial schwa, dependent, in the morphological structure, on the root of each element. Its compositional function is therefore indicated by ambi-dependency: adjunction to the nodes associated with each of the two roots. Now, although this vowel represents (as I have already claimed), a derivational morpheme, it does not acquire an ictus at the post-lexical level (despite the VCC in the preceding stem),

171

F. Colman / OE word stress

because there is no following unstressed syllable in search of an ictus to its left. Fig. 4. Compounds Post-lexical

Lexical

(a)

MS

o Y3

T I S I

(b)

I

MS

T I S /nixtayala/ (c)

MS

o

/f r a k o 0/

1

/r i: p t i: m a/

/r i: p t i: m a/

MS

P

/f r a k o O/

172

F. Colman / OE word stress

A synchronic analysis of an ‘obscured’ compound is offered in figure 4 (c) ( < fracop > ‘wicked’). Historically derived from *fra-ciip (Campbell 1959 : §74 fn. 6) the word is clearly simplex by the time of Old English (witness [u:] --f [o]: shortening and lowering characteristic of unstressed development; see further Hogg 1992a: g2.91 n. 1, 6.64). Its structures - morphological and phonological - are identical to those for figure 2 (c). The deletion of the ictus on the ‘second element’ of the historical compound is not to be introduced as part of a (structure changing) synchronic rule. Synchronically, the form is simplex, and assigned (a tonic and) an ictus only to the first syllable of its single root. Fig. 5. Complex i. Declension-class

(4

and derivational words:

suffix

Nouns/adjectives

(incl. participles)

MS

10 n d j e t/

@I MS

/a n d j e t/ MS

/wiOarsaka/

/w i

0 a r s a k a/

F. Colman / OE word stress

/u n

173

r i x t/

ii. Verbs

(4

MS

T

S

/o n (b)

s a k an/

MS 4”

6: I

/b a y a: n/

I

174

(c)

F. Colman / OE word stress MS

o \

/b i:/ 1s t a n d

a n/

The representations of prefixed (complex) declension-class words in figure 5.i illustrate the non-isomorphic relationship between morphological head and phonological head (cf. the NE mismatch type cited in 4.2.2 above): (a) < andgiet > ‘understanding’; (b) < wihersaca > ‘apostate’; (c) < unriht > ‘wrong’. Built into the stress rule is the assignment of a tonic to prefixes on declension-class words. This, however, could surely not require that the root should somehow lose its tonic at a later stage in the post-lexical level, despite the absence of stress marks on prefixed noun roots in the notation of Campbell (1959: §73; cf., e.g., NE underking etc.). Of the two tonics (one associated with the root and one with the prefix), the leftmost one is the more prominent. This is implied by the philological notation of, e.g., Hogg (1992a: §2.88), which clearly intimates ‘primary’ stress on such a prefix, and ‘secondary’ on the root. The difference between an ictus erected on a prefixed noun form and one acquired by a derivational suffix (e.g. in figure 3 (c)), is only the stage at which it it is assigned. The former is purely morphologically determined: the root, assigned a tonic, automatically acquires an ictus. The latter ictus is allowed given the morphological status of the suffix, but only under certain phonological conditions (and it is not subjoined to a tonic). I have included figure 5.i (b) as a putatively prefixed form, but with two tonics as appropriate for a compound. As it stands, this analysis claims, as does that in figure 5.i (c), a non-isomorphic relationship between the morphological and the suprasegmental structures (i.e., although morphologically complex, rather than compound, their phonological structure mirrors that appropriate for compounds). I am not sure, however, that the (b) example is not better analysed as a morphological compound (defined as consisting of two roots, i.e., two independent lexical items: see, e.g., the preposition wiber; and so also NE under in underking, preferably analysed as a morphological compound). In this case, the representation of its morphological structure

F. Colman I OE word stress

175

would map with those in figure 4, with no dependency relationship between the nodes at the morphological level. The morpheme represented by < un> (/un/) requires further comment, since (like NE mis in mismatch cited above), it is surely a genuine prefix. I take this prefix as one restricted to declension-class words. Verb-forms such as < unbindan > , infin. ‘unbind’, replacing < onbindan > , are generally not indicated in handbooks as stressed on (see, e.g., Campbell 1959: $75). I take it that the orthographic substitution was not accompanied by adoption of stress. Crucially, there was no contrast in OE between unstressed [u] and [o] before [n]. Verb-forms with prefixes spelled do not constitute evidence against stressed < un> (constrasting with ) as a prefix confined to declension-class words. Some support of morphologically-based tonic assignment to /un/ may be found from analyses of prefix-collocation to follow (especially figure 6(a)). Figure 5.ii represents analyses of (a) , infin. ‘deny’; (b) , infin. ‘occupy; (c) < bi standan > , infin ‘stand by’. Application of the stress rule to the lexical structures in figure 5.ii (a) and (b) runs as follows: _ only the root is assigned a tonic; _ the subsequent structure erects an ictus to the left of the unstressed verbal prefix - but the head of this ictus is lexically unrealised (resulting in an empty syllable); _ an inflectional syllable (as in figure 5.ii (a)) finds its ictus to its left and is satisfied by the root syllable. Note again that since the tonic is typically left modified, the bi-ictus postlexical structure does not invoke an I,. Again I stress that the rule operates in a way that is structure building. The empty syllable, once present, is never deleted (though it may be filled in the context of an utterance). Figure 5.ii (c) illustrates a counter-example to the claim in McCully and Hogg (1989: 324) that all stressed putative prefixes on verbs ‘share a phonological regularity, which is that they are bisyllabic’: such forms cannot therefore be treated under a part of a phonological rule invoking extrametricality (discussed in section 4.3.2 above). Aside from this, however, application of the rule in figure 5.ii (c) involves a strong claim inviting controversy. Handbooks attribute primary stress to certain prefixes on OE verbs with a typical classification as ‘quasi-prefixes’ (Campbell 1959: §79), accompanying the recognition that such ‘prefix’ forms also occur as independent lexical items. The history of English does not bear out a pattern of prominence on verb prefixes (e.g., undergo, forego); nor does the evidence of orthographic

176

F. Colman / OE word stress

forms of OE prefixes suggesting reduced stress (as in figure 5.ii (b), with < be > rather than < bi > ). I suggest that as long as primary stress (specifically, a tonic) is to be assigned to a ‘quasi-prefix’, the ‘quasi-prefix’ is a separate word. When that word becomes lexicalised as part of the verb, its stress assignment follows the normal one for conjugation-class prefixes. (Such lexicalisation involves semantic obscuration - or metaphorical reinterpretation: so, for instance, to undergo is not to go under in a literal sense. See, however, Hogg 1992a: $2.87: ‘when the prefix remains with the verb the stress pattern is as for other compounds . . . Naturally, the root morpheme of the verb becomes primary-stressed when the prefix is separated from the verb’.) Analyses of forms with collocated prefixes are exemplified in figure 6: (a) < ungebyld > ‘impatience’; (b) < unondgetful> ‘senseless’; (c) < geuntrumod > , past part. ‘weaken’; (d) < fore gescrifan > ‘pre-ordain’. Sequences of unstressed (verbal) prefixes do not occur. Where an unstressed prefix is preceded by a stressed one, the former finds its leftward ictus in that associated with the latter: the empty syllable to the left of /jai is filled by /un/ in figure 6 (a) (see section 5: OEWS (3.ii) above, on < ge> as representing a non-tonic-bearing prefix). Recall the restriction on the government of derivational morphemes by a leftward root (OEWS (3) above): and that this applies only to suffixes. The prefix realised by /un/ can therefore govern /jai. Fig. 6. Collocated

(4

MS

prefixes

“p

/unjaeyld/

MS

d

I di

F. Colman / OE word stress

(b) MS

177 MS

II--S 1

/unondjetful/

Cc)

I

I

,

I

I

/:nhndje\ful/

MS

1

/hndndje\fu?/

I I

F. Colman / OE word stress

178

(4

MS

3

MS

S

/j a u n t r u m o d/ (e)

MS

o

@/jauntrumod/ MS

T

sup I

S /f 0 r a/ /j a S r i: f (1 n/

Figure 6 (b) and (d) exemplify data not dealt with in the accounts that have inspired my explorations. Figure 6 (b) illustrates a sequence of two items traditionally described as stressed prefixes. The analysis here assumes a system of alternating stress (still under the operation of the tonic-assigning rule). Assignment of a tonic to the syllabic of the first eligible prefix, but not to the second, obviates any need for recourse to cyclicity. The result may appear to invoke trochaic reversal, in that /and/ is less prominent than /jet/ (cf. figure 5.i(a); note that the co> / variation in spelling does not of itself correlate with evidence of stress or accent reduction, but is diatopically and/or diachronically determined: Campbell 1959: 9 130). Such reversal is evidenced in present-day Germanic patterns, as in German A&g&e ‘work’,

F. Colman I OE word stress

179

with a prominent prefix, compared with Hausaufgabe ‘homework’, in which accent alternation subdues this prominence (see, e.g. Borowski 1921). A formulation that eschews structure-changing rules (in this instance, ‘deletion’ of the tonic associated with the noun prefix), might account for the acceptability of such reversal by appeal to its operation on a level other than the lexical one. But alternatively, all three derivational morphemes in the latter form would be sequenced in the lexicon before the assignment of accent(s) and stress; and this is what the analysis in figure 6 (b) assumes for the sequence /un/, /and/, and /jet/. It is not clear, however, that evidence for the OE pattern can be extrapolated from current Germanic patterns (especially ones not current in English). In the absence of clear criteria for assessing the analyses, that in figure 6 (c), with prominence given to /and/, is equally plausible. Figure 6 (d) simply illustrates the ability of /un/ to precede or follow an unstressed prefix: compare /un/ + /jai in figure 6 (a). In figure 6 (e) I persist with an interpretation of ‘quasi-prefixes’ as separate lexical items. In this instance, an unrealised ictus (the initial ictus in /jaJri:fan/) is filled in the utterance by the dissyllabic sequence /fora/.

6. Conclusion Old English stress is morphologically sensitive at the lexical level, but subject to post-lexical phonological conditions under which structures may be built upon: specification may be increased. The rule does not involve structure changing.

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