Cover not available

In:English Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning
Edited by Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 358] 2022
► pp. 41–60

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 2
The foot in the history of English

Challenges to metrical coherence

ORCiD logo with link | University of Toronto
ORCiD logo with link | University of Oxford
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.358.02dre
Abstract
Dresher & Lahiri (1991) propose that Old English displays ‘metrical coherence’: different phonological processes are sensitive to the same metrical structure. We consider how English has dealt with challenges to metrical coherence. We show that the resolved moraic trochee, assumed to characterize the early Old English foot (Bermúdez-Otero manuscript; Goering 2016a, b), became untenable after the shortening of unstressed vowels, arguing that this stage of Old English, at least, requires the Germanic Foot, an extended and resolved trochee. After 1570 (Lahiri 2015) the direction of parsing changed from left-to-right to right-to-left when the number of Latin loanwords with stress-affecting suffixes had passed a threshold derived from Yang’s Tolerance Principle (Yang 2016). This change reestablished the metrical coherence that had been disrupted by these words.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Change in the early Old English metrical system
  • 3.The change in directionality
  • 4.The change in the edge of main stress
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (38)
References
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. Manuscript. A-stem nouns in West Saxon: Synchrony. From: The life cycle of constraint rankings: Studies in early English morphophonology. 2005. [URL]. (30 June, 2021).
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo & Richard M. Hogg. 2003. The actuation problem in Optimality Theory: Phonologization, rule inversion, and rule loss. In D. Eric Holt (ed.), Optimality Theory and language change, 91–120. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blake, Norman F. 1996. A history of the English language. London: Macmillan Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Danielsson, Bror. 1948. Studies on accentuation of polysyllabic Latin, Greek, and Romance loan-words in English, with special reference to those ending in -able, -ate, -ator, -ible, -ic, -ical, and -ize. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksells.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan. 1985. Old English and the theory of phonology. New York: Garland. Reissued 2019. Oxford: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. The chronology and status of Anglian smoothing. In Sharon Hargus & Ellen Kaisse (eds.), Studies in Lexical Phonology: Phonetics and Phonology, Volume 4, 325–341. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. The influence of loanwords on Norwegian and English stress. Nordlyd 39(2). 24–43. Special Issue: Sylvia Blaho, Martin Krämer & Bruce Morén-Duolljá (eds.), A Festschrift on the occasion of X years of CASTL phonology and Curt Rice’s Lth birthday. [URL].
Dresher, B. Elan & Aditi Lahiri. 1991. The Germanic Foot: Metrical coherence in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 22(2). 251–286.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Main stress left in early Middle English. In Michael Fortescue, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen & Lene Schøsler (eds.), Historical Linguistics 2003. Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 10–15 August 2003, 75–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Romance loanwords and stress shift in English: A quantitative approach. Paper presented at the Second Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, University of Edinburgh, December 3–4. [URL]. (30 June, 2021).
Fikkert, Paula, B. Elan Dresher & Aditi Lahiri. 2006. Prosodic preferences: From Old English to Early Modern English. In Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (eds.), The handbook of the history of English, 125–150. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fulk, Robert D. 2010. The roles of phonology and analogy in Old English high vowel deletion. Transactions of the Philological Society 108(2). 126–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goering, Nelson. 2016a. Early Old English foot structure. Transactions of the Philological Society 114(2). 171–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016b. The linguistic elements of Old Germanic metre: Phonology, metrical theory, and the development of alliterative verse. Oxford: University of Oxford PhD thesis.
Halle, Morris & Samuel Jay Keyser. 1971. English stress: Its form, its growth, and its role in verse. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halle, Morris, Wayne O’Neil & Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 1993. Metrical coherence in Old English without the Germanic Foot. Linguistic Inquiry 24(3). 529–539.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. 1992. A grammar of Old English. Volume 1: Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000. On the (non-)existence of High Vowel Deletion. In Aditi Lahiri (ed.), Analogy, levelling, markedness, 353–377. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. & Robert D. Fulk. 2011. A grammar of Old English. Volume 2: Morphology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hutton, John. 1998. The development of secondary stress in Old English. In Linda van Bergen & Richard M. Hogg (eds.), Historical Linguistics 1995, Volume 2: Germanic linguistics, 115–130. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Idsardi, William J. 1994. Open and closed feet in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 25(3). 522–533.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keyser, Samuel Jay & Wayne O’Neil. 1985. Rule generalization and optionality in language change. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1. 199–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 1997. The syntax of verb movement in Middle English: Dialect variation and language contact. In Ans van Kemenade & Nigel Vincent (eds.), Parameters of morphosyntactic change, 297–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuryłowicz, Jerzy. 1949. Latin and Germanic metre. English and Germanic Studies 2. 34–38. Reprinted 1950 in Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego X and in Jerzy Kuryłowicz. 1973. Esquisses linguistiques I. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1970. Die sprachlichen Grundlagen der altgermanischen Metrik. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft Vorträge 1. Innsbruck. Reprinted in Jerzy Kuryłowicz. 1975. Esquisses linguistiques II. Munich: Wilhelm Fink.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi. 1982. Theoretical implications of analogical change: Evidence from Germanic languages. Providence, RI: Brown University PhD thesis.
. 2015. Change in word prosody: Stress and quantity. In Patrick Honeybone & Joseph Salmons (eds.), The handbook of historical phonology, 219–244. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lahiri, Aditi, Tomas Riad & Haike Jacobs. 1999. Diachronic prosody. In Harry van der Hulst (ed.), Word prosodic systems in the languages of Europe, 335–422. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levins, Peter. 1570. Manipulus vocabulorum: A dictionary of English and Latin words, arranged in the order of the last syllables, by Peter Levins (1570). Re-edited, with a preface and alphabetical index, by Henry B. Wheatley. 1867. Westminister: Nichols & Sons for the Camden Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Minkova, Donka. 1997. Constraint ranking in Middle English stress-shifting. English Language and Linguistics 1. 135–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Redford, Michael. 2003. Middle English stress doubles: New evidence from Chaucer’s meter. In Paula Fikkert & Haike Jacobs (eds.), Development in Prosodic systems (Studies in Generative Grammar 58), 159–196. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roca, Iggy M. 1999. Stress in the Romance languages. In Harry van der Hulst (ed.), Word prosodic systems in the languages of Europe, 659–811. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Russom, Geoffrey. 1987. Old English meter and linguistic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sievers, Eduard. 1893. Altgermanische Metrik. Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Walker, John. 1791. A critical pronouncing dictionary and expositor of the English language. London: Robinson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yang, Charles. 2005. On productivity. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 5(1). 265–302. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The price of linguistic productivity: How children learn to break the rules of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Sytsema, Johanneke & Aditi Lahiri
2025. Romance Loans in Middle Dutch and Middle English: Retained or Lost? A Matter of Metre1. Transactions of the Philological Society DOI logo
Booth, Joshua J.
2023. Rethinking the Metre of Parzival: Iambic Verse for a Trochaic Language. Transactions of the Philological Society 121:1 ► pp. 91 ff. DOI logo
Goering, Nelson
2023. Prosody in Medieval English and Norse, DOI logo
Yang, Charles
2023. A User’s Defense of the Tolerance Principle: Reply to Enger (2022). Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 145:4 ► pp. 563 ff. DOI logo
Yang, Charles
2024. Phonological Regularity and Breakdown. An Account of Vowel Length Leveling in Middle English. In The Method Works, ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue