ANGLICA
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On the Possibility of Continuity in the Metrical Status of Heavy Syllables in Medieval English
31
Marta Kołos
University of Warsaw
On the Possibility of Continuity in the Metrical
Status of Heavy Syllables in Medieval English
Abstract
The present paper focuses on instances of irregular, non-root accentuation placed on words of
Germanic origin in Middle English iambic verse. A proposed explanation for the phenomenon
is the continued special metrical status of heavy syllables from Old to Middle English and
the retained potential of such syllables for attracting poetic accent. The analysis also takes
into account additional factors, including possible external influences and morphological
considerations. The text samples are selected basing on the date of their provenance and
metrical regularity. In order to reduce the possibility of the results being affected by any
loose applications of metre, the analysis is confined to the metrically strongest positions
within each type of verse.
1. Introduction
Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration;
they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things
but do not understand the meaning of them.
Socrates (in Plato’s Apology, translated by B. Jowett 1891)
The above quote attributed to Socrates by Plato, regardless of its original intention, might serve as a good introduction to the study of certain technical aspects of
Middle English poetry. If Socrates’s words applied to form rather than meaning,
the message would be that the metrical structure of verse is not a matter of a poet’s
learning, but primarily of the language instinct which lies at the roots of all poetry.
While this thought is not expressed in Socrates’s Defense, most modern scholars,
including Kuryłowicz (1976), Russom (1990), and Dresher and Lahiri (1991)
agree that a strong correspondence between linguistic prosody and poetic metre is
to be expected. This seems especially true of the creators of medieval verse, who
retained strong ties with oral traditions and typically avoided experimentation. Yet,
exceptions are easily found, even in the works of the greatest Middle English poets.
32
Marta Kołos
(1) Sownynge alwey th’encrees of his wynnyng
He wolde the see were kept for any thyng (General Prologue, l.275–276)
The above line from The Canterbury Tales (Furnivall ed. 1879, MS Ellesmere)
shows an apparent departure from the idea of correspondence between poetic
metre and linguistic prosody. Though one might assume trochaic substitution at
the beginning of the line, the same is not plausible for the final foot. As stated by
Minkova (1996, 103), rhymes are the most inviolable position in a line of verse.
The final accented syllable is thus outside of the root morpheme, which stands in
opposition to stressing patterns for the lexical items of Germanic origin. Lahiri,
Riad and Jakobs (1999, 336) state that “Common Germanic primary stress invariably occurred on the root syllable, which in the vast majority of cases was the first
syllable of a word.” In the case of compounds, stress was also left-bound (Lass
1994, 90).
Yet, virtually every work of Middle English poetry contains instances of
native words accented on non-root syllables. Four possible explanations may be
postulated:
(2) I. the loose application of metrical principles;
II.continuity in the status of heavy syllables from Old to Middle English in
terms of the potential to serve as an accented syllable in verse;
III.the influence of French accentuation patterns;
IV. morphological considerations.
The present paper will refer to all of the above. The main focus, however,
will be on hypotheses II and III. The obvious candidate when it comes to finding
a simple explanation is the impact of French accentuation patterns. The present
paper aims to show that this factor fails to account fully for non-root accentuation
in Middle English poetry, thus pointing to the role of syllable weight.
2. Reliability of Middle English verse as a source of metrical data
The first crucial issue when it comes to an analysis of irregularities in Middle
English metre is whether metrical data obtained from poetry should be treated as reliable. Any divergences from the usual pattern might simply be ascribed to a loose application of metrical principles. Such an explanation does
not seem plausible for several reasons. As mentioned above, most scholars believe that there is a close correspondence between poetic metre and linguistic
prosody. Metre has always had ornamental values, but, especially in the case
of early verse forms, it was also important as a mnemonic device, as it facilitated oral delivery (often accompanied by music) and reception. Middle English
On the Possibility of Continuity in the Metrical Status of Heavy Syllables in Medieval English
33
poetry was still, to a large extent, intended for recitation and was not overly experimental. Thus a sudden departure from the adherence to linguistic principles seems
unlikely.
Another important aspect is the steady percentage of native words with accent placed outside the root throughout the period. The time of composition,
authorship and the artistic skills of the author seem of little consequence with
the percentage values ranging roughly between 5 and 10%, as seen in Figure
1. If metre were applied loosely, the expected results would probably be more
varied.
Ormulum (1000-line
sample)
The Owl and the
Nightingale (value based on
Kołos 2014)
9%
The Canterbury Tales
(1000-line sample)
7%
91%
6%
93%
The Pilgrimage of the Life
of Man (1000-line sample)
5%
94%
95%
regular accents
non-root syllables as the accent in the strongest foot
Fig. 1. Percentage of native words with poetic accent placed outside the root
In order to further maximise the reliability of data and avoid the instances
where multiple interpretations might be possible, the data were collected only from
the metrically strongest positions. Where present, rhymes served as such, due to
their virtually inviolable nature (Minkova 1996, 103). In the case of the Ormulum
the final accent of the first hemistich was selected.
(3) Ormulum verse structure according to Minkova (1996)
Line
W-Hemistich
W-Colon
S-Hemistich
S-Colon
W-Foot S-Foot W-Foot S-Foot
W S
W S
W S
W S
W-Colon
S-Colon
Foot
W-Foot S-Foot
W S
W S
W S
34
Marta Kołos
A shown in (3), the accented syllable in the fourth foot is the second strongest
position within the line. The strongest position was discarded as it consistently
avoids linguistically unacceptable accents (Minkova 1996, 103). A summary of the
results is presented in Table 1 below. Early Middle English is represented by 1,000
lines from the Ormulum (based on Holt ed. 1878). The later works are a 1,000line excerpt from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (based on Furnivall’s
1879 edition of the Ellesmere MS) and a 1,000-line excerpt from John Lydgate’s
verse translation of Guillaume de Deguileville’s The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man
(Furnivall ed. 1904).
Table 1. Accented non-root syllables in the metrically strongest positions (1,000line samples)
Text
Ormulum
The Canterbury Tales
The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man
Percentage of lines
9.1%
5.8%
4.9%
Date of composition
c1200
end of the 14c
1426
Table 1 shows the percentage of lines with a native non-root syllable serving as
the accent in the strongest foot (the second strongest in the case of the Ormulum).
Although such lines never constitute more than 10%, the numbers, as already noted,
are too high to be discarded completely as unintended imperfections. The full list
of the relevant syllables is shown in Table 2 below:
Table 2. Non-root native syllables in strongest accented positions
ITEM
-ærd
-blōd
-bōc
-bōne
-bury
-craft
-daȝ
-dēl
-dōm
-er
-floc
-fōre
-ful
-hēd(e)
OCCURRENCES
3
1
3
1
1
1
1
3
8
3
4
1
2
2
ITEM
-ish
-kin
-king
-lawe
-lēs
-leȝc
-lōnd
-lī
-man(n), -men(n)
-mō
-mouthe
-ness(e)
-nyght
-ōn(e)
OCCURRENCES
1
3
2
2
4
12
1
24
5
2
1
24
3
7
On the Possibility of Continuity in the Metrical Status of Heavy Syllables in Medieval English
ITEM
-rann
-rift
-sæw
-sang
-seye
-so
-spel
-spradde
-stōn
-tale
OCCURRENCES
1
4
2
1
1
9
2
1
1
1
ITEM
-tīn
-trē(o)
-way
-welle
-word
-ī
-ye
-yng
-þeod
35
OCCURRENCES
9
6
2
2
2
4
1
21
1
3. French influence
The political context of the Middle English period contributed to the steady inflow
of French vocabulary. The Romance stressing pattern, which places stress on the
final syllable, fitted well into the newly introduced iambic structure, which became
the leading poetic metre of the period. A sequence of binary feet with an unaccented
syllable followed by an accented one, however, was not an ideal match when it
came to native vocabulary, especially words with an even number of syllables.
(4)If I to yow wolde harm or vileynye.
I am nat come / your conseil for tespye,
But trewely / the cause of my comynge
Was oonly for to herkne how that ye synge.
(The Canterbury Tales, Group C, Fragment 4, l.4477–4480)
Item (4) shows four consecutive lines from The Canterbury Tales, i.e. two
rhyming pairs. Lines 4477 and 4478 end with words of French origin which retain
their original stressing pattern, and thus fit well into the last foot. The following two
lines, however, have native items in the last foot. The suffix -yng needs to serve as
the rhyme and has to be accented. The question arises whether the proximity of the
two line endings had any impact on the poet’s choices. On a more general level,
the French influence hypothesis might be considered valid if a clear correlation is
found between the number of foreign items accented on the last syllable and the
number of non-root accents in native items within the same text. As before, the
analysis was confined to the strongest metrical position within a line.
36
Marta Kołos
(5)
Accent on the final syllable in words of native and foreign origin: a correlation
borrowings with accent on final sallable
300
The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man
250
200
The Canterbury Tales
150
100
Ormulum
50
0
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
native items with accent on non-root syllable
The graph in (5) however, shows that the correlation is exactly opposite to
the expected one. It appears that the abundance of French borrowings in a text
meant that the poet did not have to resort to violating the principles of Germanic
accentuation. John Lydgate’s translation displays the highest number of Romance
borrowings accented on the final syllable in rhyming positions, amounting to 277
occurrences per 1,000 lines. Within the same poem there are only 49 native words
treated in the same way. When it comes to borrowings, Chaucer’s The Canterbury
Tales contains 179 rhyming final syllables. The number of native items in the said
position is somewhat higher, i.e. 58. Finally, in the Ormulum, there are as many as
91 non-root accented native items and only 45 multisyllabic Romance borrowings
with a final syllable serving as the accent in the fourth foot. Virtually all items in
the latter group are proper names, as shown in Table 3 below:
Table 3. Ormulum, Romance borrowings with a final syllable serving as the accent
in the fourth foot
WORD
Cherubyn
Gabriæl
quaþþrigan
Raphaæl
Salemann
OCCURRENCES
1
7
2
1
1
On the Possibility of Continuity in the Metrical Status of Heavy Syllables in Medieval English
WORD
Seraphyn
Ytamár
Ȝerrsalæm
Amminadab
Eleazár
Elysabæþ, Elyzabæth
Johan
Josæp
Propitiatoriumm
Spontaneus
37
OCCURRENCES
2
4
1
6
3
5
9
1
1
1
With such a limited selection of the alternatives of foreign origin, Orm was
forced to find native choices for the strongest metrical position within the line.
Those included primarily lexical monosyllables and disyllabic words with unaccented prefixes. For reasons of meaning and variation, however, non-root native
syllables also needed to carry accent in over 9% of the lines in the sample.
The analysis also indicates that the date of composition might be of relevance.
The Ormulum, the earliest of the analysed texts, contains the highest number of
irregularities. This might point to the possibility of a connection to properties of
Old English metre.
4. Syllable weight
The irregularities listed in Table 2 might be related to the significance of syllable
weight (possibly working alongside morphological factors) in the assignment of
accent. Dresher and Lahiri (1991) state that quantitative considerations were an
integral part of linguistic prosody in Old English. Furthermore, it is widely accepted
that an accented position in Old English verse needed to be filled with a heavy
syllable (or its resolved equivalent). This applied not only to primary but also to
the secondary accent (and also lower levels of accent, as postulated e.g. by Fulk
1992 and Suzuki 1996).
(6) syllable weight
heavy: VV
VC(.)C
light: V
(VC#)
38
Marta Kołos
Item (6) above shows the distinction between heavy and light syllables (Dresher
and Lahiri 1991; Lass 1994). A non-branching nucleus and the lack of a coda signify
lightness, whereas a long vowel indicates a heavy syllable. A short vowel followed
by two consonants (one of which may belong to the onset of a following syllable)
is likewise a heavy syllable. Word final -VC# syllables are an area of some dispute.
Most, however, agree as to their light quality in multisyllabic strings (Dresher and
Lahiri 1991).
Returning to the analysis at hand, it is worth noting that the majority of the
morphemes in Table 2 are heavy or could be considered “etymologically heavy”
with respect to their Old English forms. This concerns morphemes which originally
contained long syllables or consonant clusters in the coda, including geminates
(Hayes 1989 points to the heavy quality of the latter). The remaining syllables are
listed below:
Table 4. Light native syllables in accented positions
ITEM
-daȝ
-er
-ish
-lawe
-tale
-way
OCCURRENCES
1
3
1
2
1
2
The syllables in Table 4 constitute c5% of the set of irregularities from Item
(4) and thus appear only in c0.3% of all the lines in the analysed texts. The suffix
-ish occurs as the second syllable of the word English. In the latter context, the
MED points to the influence of the Anglo-French Englais, which might explain
the acceptability of an iambic accentuation pattern.
Three of the morphemes in Table 4, -daȝ, -way and -tale, are compound elements which frequently function as separate words. The two kinds of usage often
appear alongside one another, as shown below:
(7) Þe seffnde daȝȝ iss Resstedaȝȝ (Ormulum, l.4186)
This might be considered an argument in favour of a purely morphological
approach to the principles of accentuation. However, some theories explain such
instances e.g. by postulating different weight assignment rules for lexical and
function words (Bermúdez-Otero 1996, 22). Also significant might be the minimal
shape of content words in English: -VC#, -VV# or -VCV#, with no such requirements existing for function words (Suzuki 1996, 240). Thus, the importance of the
On the Possibility of Continuity in the Metrical Status of Heavy Syllables in Medieval English
39
morphological aspect need not disprove a combined quantitative approach (in the
case of word stress, morphological and phonological requirements are also often
combined). Iambic metres, unlike Old English alliterative metre, do not leave any
space for levels of accent. Thus, given the lack of secondary stress, the potential
of heavy syllables for serving as carriers of accent might have survived in Middle
English poetry as a non-preferred variant.
5. Morphology
The final aspect worthy of analysis, morphological one, will only be discussed here
briefly, but is, of course, worthy of a more in-depth analysis. It should be noted
that the analysed data shows an avoidance of inflectional morphemes in accented
positions. Almost all of the relevant morphemes are compound elements or derivative morphemes. This seems to have been an important factor in their selection
for accented positions. Another aspect might be found in the possible incomplete
grammaticalisation of certain items. Suffixes such as -dom and -hed occurred as
separate words in Old English. According to Marchand (1969, 232) “combinations
with -hād as a second-word were (...) compounds in Old English”. This state might
have been fossilized in poetry.
Morphological aspects, however, need not disprove the impact of weightdriven considerations. An earlier study (Kołos 2012) has shown that the suffix
-ing occurs in accented positions not only in gerunds but also in present participles. Notable in the analysed sample from the Ormulum is the consistent use of
the word Drihtin ‘Lord’ within a single iambic foot. It does not seem plausible
that the second syllable of this word would have been interpreted as a suffix. The
MED, however, states that spelling often indicated the long quality of the second
vowel.
6. Conclusions
The above analysis of selected Middle English text samples points to the limited
impact of Romance stressing patterns on the placement of suffixes and non-primary
compound elements in accented positions. The Ormulum, an early text containing
a relatively low number of borrowings, contains the highest number of anomalies
when it comes to non-root accentuation.
The above might serve as an indication of the impact of Old English metrical
principles and, hence, the important role of syllable weight. The abandonment of
variable degrees of accent, present in alliterative poetry, means that non-root heavy
syllables may have been regarded as deficient yet possible candidates for accented
positions.
40
Marta Kołos
The choice of accented syllables was also determined, to an extent, by morphological considerations. Derivative suffixes and compound elements were the
preferred choice, while inflectional suffixes were avoided.
Finally, it should be emphasized that the analysis does not postulate any
linguistic properties for Middle English outside of verse. The diachronic analysis
points to metrical weight-sensitivity as a remnant of an earlier poetic tradition,
which would have survived only in verse.
References
(a) Database
Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. 1879. The Ellesmere MS of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
London: N. Trübner.
Furnivall, Frederick J., ed. 1904. The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, Englisht by
John Lydgate, A.D. 1426, from the French of Guillaume de Deguileville, A.D.
1330, 1355. London: N. Trübner.
Holt, Robert, ed. 1878. The Ormulum. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press.
Jowett, Benjamin (trans.). 1891. The Republic by Plato. New York: Oxford University Press.
(b) Special studies
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 1996. “Stress and Quantity in Old and Early Middle
English: Evidence for an Optimality Theoretic Model of Language Change.”
[Available at Rutgers Optimality Archive, 136-0996].
Dresher, B. Elan, and Aditi Lahiri. 1991. “The Germanic Foot: Metrical Coherence
in Old English.” Linguistic Inquiry 22: 251–286.
Fulk, Robert Dennis. 1992. A History of Old English Meter. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Hayes, Bruce. 1989. “The Prosodic Hierarchy of Meter.” Phonetics and Phonology. Vol. 1: Rhythm and Meter. Ed. Paul Kiparsky, and Gilbert Youmans. San
Diego: Academic Press. 201–260.
Kołos, Marta. 2014. “Non-Root Initial Ictus on Native Words in Old and Middle
English Poetry”. Anglica: An International Journal of English Studies 23/2:
33–41.
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Lass, Roger. 1994. Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Marchand, Hans. 1969. The Categories and Types of Present-day English WordFormation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach. 2nd ed. München: C.H. Beck.
Minkova, Donka. 1996. “Non-Primary Stress in Early Middle English AccentualSyllabic Verse.” English Historical Metrics. Ed. C.B. McCully, and J.J. Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 95–120.
Russom, Geoffrey. 1990. “A New Kind of Metrical Evidence in Old English Poetry.”
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Law, Nigel Vincent, and Susan Wright. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 435–457.
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