This paper is a part of a larger study on the general subject, ‘The Loss or Retention of Weak Syllables in English,’ which I shall publish at a later time.

It is well known that there are words like aged, blessed, learned, in which the e is silent if the word is a participle, but is sounded if the word is an adjective. I am not aware that an explanation of this interesting phenomenon has been offered, other than the usual untenable one that it is “in order to distinguish” the parts of speech. It is my object in this paper to show (1) that this, as well as certain closely related phenomena, is based on the fact that our speech prefers a rhythm consisting of syllables alternately strong and weak, and (2) that this has produced different results in the adjective from what it has in the participle because the usual position of the adjective with reference to the other members of the sentence is not that generally occupied by the participle.