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Constraint ranking in Middle English stress-shifting1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Donka Minkova
Donka Minkova
Affiliation:
English DepartmentUCLALos Angeles, CA [email protected]
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Extract

Developing an idea first articulated by Luick in 1896, Halle & Keyser (1971) posit the introduction of a new accentuation rule in Middle English (ME), the weight-sensitive Romance Stress Rule (RSR). All post-1971 accounts of English stress take the syllable weight principle of the RSR as their starting point. For twenty-five years there has been no scrutiny of the assumption that syllable weight became relevant for stress assignment in ME. It has been claimed, and the claims have not been addressed, that the RSR is part of the phonology of late OE (O'Neil, 1973), that by late ME the RSR had completely replaced the Germanic accentuation patterns (Nakao, 1977), and that the existence of the RSR in ME justifies the reconstruction of analogical pronunciations such as hardi, holi, riding(e), a real shift from the Germanic to the Romance category (Halle & Keyser, 1971; Luick, 1896). The paper refutes these claims on the basis of new evidence and analysis in terms of generalized prosodic constraints.

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Articles
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English Language & Linguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 135 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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