[tied] Re: IE thematic presents and the origin of their thematic vo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> Rob wrote:
>
> > On another note, do you know where the English accentual
> > distinctions, such as accént vs. áccent and recórd vs. récord, come
> > from?
>
> To sum up a rather long and complex story, the stress in Franco-
> Latinate words was essentially final (on the last full vowel) at the
> time they were borrowed, but later tended to be retracted (in ways
> depending on English syllable weight). Verbs and adjectives were more
> likely than nouns to retain final stress (primary or at least
> secondary), because they often occurred with syllabic suffixes and
> inflections, e.g. record --> recorded, recordeth, recording,
> recorder, and consequently the final syllable had fewer opportunities
> to become "extrametrical".

There is evidence that some Modern English speakers hesitate between
initial and non-initial stress in some Latinate words,
e.g. "impóssible" vs. "ímpossible", or even the "accent" words
(personally, I tend to pronounce the noun and the verb the same, with
initial stress).

The point you make, then, is that these English stress alternations
were not originally native to English itself, but rather that it
acquired them from Latinate borrowings. That was the impression
(there's that word again!) I had gathered already. However, the accent
alternations we see in IE, viz. between barytone substantives and
oxytone modifiers, seem to have come from within the language itself.
So the comparison here is superficial, at best.

- Rob