Farrington B.’s count (retention+apocope

14.2 % 8.1 % 3.5 % 2.8 %

30.0 % 19.0 % 7.6 % 5.4 %

It can be seen that the two counts yield the same pattern. Farrington Babcock (1914: 62) says that if -e is followed by a vowel or h-, elision “naturally occurs”; this is why she disregards the elided cases. But as we have seen in 1.1, an elision site, by definition, obscures any possible apocope at the same place. It is highly probable that Chaucer would not have apocopated every -e at the elision sites: but the possibility is there that he would have dropped some of those -e’s, where they were followed by a consonant. This possibility is not to be assumed for Gower, however, because he did not apocopate an -e anywhere. The findings of (13) do not exactly confirm Farrington Babcock’s (1914: 81) assumption: of these four nouns, although it is a Germanic noun (name) that apocopates most, it is also a Germanic noun (herte) that apocopates least. The corpus examined, however, is not large enough to refute her theory – and it must be observed that a Germanic noun which had been part of the language for a longer time than a Romance one, is likely to apocopate more regularly than a Romance one. If we look at the Gowerian forms, we can see that the -e is underlyingly present in them: it is either retained, or its dropping has a contextual explanation (elision). The deletion is always post-lexical. In Chaucer, however, there are forms (the apocopated ones), whose -e-dropping may be required by the metre, but in order to exist at all, they had to be allowed by his lexicon. About the very frequently used word have, Guthrie (1988: 391) says that “vestigial final -e may still be retrieved at the poet’s discretion, perhaps for metrical reasons, but probably not for metrical reasons alone: the poet must be willing to accept the stylistic effects which come with the ending, as a contemporary American poet who uses oft instead of often must be able to make use of its stylistic register.” This may suggest that Chaucer had two forms of have stored in his lexicon: an -e-dropping one and an -e-retaining one. To extend this assumption to every word may be too far-fetched: but what The Even Yearbook 9 (2010), Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest ISSN 2061–490X, http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even, © 2010, Gyöngyi Werthmüller

Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 18

is certain is that whereas Chaucer’s (poetic) phonology allows him to delete (i.e. apocopate) certain -e’s without any more reason than the metre and the grammatical process of deleting inflections and word endings, Gower was keen to make sure that the dropping of -e always had a phonological reason. Without treating them at the same length as monosyllabic nouns, let me show that the same is true for Gower’s disyllabic nouns borrowed from French (like nature) – except for one single noun: manere. These words could be stressed in the Romance way, on their penultimate syllable (natúre?), with -e retained or dropped; or in the Germanic way, on the first syllable (náture0), with the -e probably dropped. We must note though that it would be possible for náturë to occur in a verse line, if we assumed an inverted foot: (14) Dactylic náturë? /

X

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

‘Nature [who] took them into lore’ But foot inversion cannot always be assumed (only after a line or phrase boundary), and Romance stress was possible anyway – moreover, more probable than Germanic stress, as (15) (a typical scenario) shows. As it stands, then, the following variations are possible:

Dropped Retained

Romance stress

Germanic stress

natúre0 natúrë

náture0

• náturë

Let us examine the occurrences of nature (see (15)) and manere (see (16)) in Gower. (15) the pronunciations of nature in CONFESSIO V

C

nátur#V: 10 nátur#C: 0 natúr#V: 21 natúr#C: 0 natúrë#V: 0 (violating elision, hiatus) natúrë#C: 11 náturë#: 0 (impossible for metrical reasons)

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 19

(16) the pronunciations of manere in CONFESSIO V

C

máner#V: 11 máner#C: 39 manér#V: 34 manér#C: 0 manérë#V: 0 (violating elision, hiatus) manérë#C: 3 mánerë#: 0 (impossible for metrical reasons) (15) shows that no matter whether nature is front-stressed or end-stressed, its -e is dropped only if it is followed by a vowel. That vowel is necessary to ensure the non-pronunciation of the -e – which in the front-stressed tokens is never retained. That the -e (schwa) is always present underlyingly appears from the fact that its dropping can always be justified. That no vowel can follow the retained -e of end-stressed natúre can be accounted for by the fact that hiatus is normally avoided in ME verse. In (16), the end-stressed examples behave the same way as in (15): if the -e is dropped, it is always followed by a vowel to justify the elision. If the -e is retained (hence no elision site is required), it is always followed by a consonant, to avoid hiatus. However, in the majority of the front-stressed tokens, mánere0 is followed by a consonant. No final -e is retained, though no vowel is present to create the elision site. This may allow for the assumption that the -e of mánere normally apocopates in Gower: but if something “normally apocopates” and is hardly ever pronounced, we might as well claim that it is not there underlyingly any more, i.e. that this word already had a form máner in Gower’s lexicon. Furthermore, if we observe other disyllabic Romance nouns which can have the stress on either syllable, we find that they behave like nature, not like manere. The data in (3)–(10) also show that apocope is very atypical of Gower. Hence we had probably better conclude that manere was one of the very first words in Gower to go through restructuring: unlike other words borrowed from French, it usually had the stress on the first syllable; and if it did, the -e (schwa) was underlyingly not present. This suggests that manere was further advanced in the process of losing final -e than most (if not all) other nouns in Gower. Windeatt (1977: 57-8) remarks that “[t]he marked tolerance of variable stress is suggested by use of the more ordinary loanword manere, which in [Chaucer’s] TROILUS appears to be mostly accentuated in the modern way when occurring in midline”. Indeed, maner was a commonly used word (more commonly than today), appearing in such expressions as maner thing (‘sort of thing’). The Even Yearbook 9 (2010), Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest ISSN 2061–490X, http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even, © 2010, Gyöngyi Werthmüller

Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 20

On the foregoing pages my intention has been to express my agreement with the school which holds that word-final -e was working (more or less) regularly, and its function was grammatical and (in the data analysed in (3)– (10)) lexical. I have to reject Robinson’s (1971: 95) opinion, according to which “[…] in a few cases Chaucer felt that the ordinary pronunciation of a word was with sounded -e (deere for instance frequently appears to break the elision rule and have its -e sounded before a vowel or h-, especially in the phrase deere herte), though in most cases the -e is only to be sounded on special occasions, and on others left unambiguously silent through elision. […] in all these cases he tends to avoid unnecessary problems whether by leaving the reader discretion at a place where some readers might otherwise damage the verse, or by preventing the problem arising at all when he elides the -e.”11 Robinson seems to suggest that elision helps ensuring the usual dropping of -e. This would be a tenable assumption, if there were no final -e’s which solely the metre shows are to be dropped (that is, apocopated). It is true that Robinson is not completely against the sounding of word-final -e’s, and he is aware that final -e’s cannot be inserted at the end of any word. He presumes that the -e’s once justified by grammar can still be pronounced, but most of the time this has a rhetorical effect. I believe that the data and the analysis above do not confirm this theory.

2 Smithers’s theory and the issue of -en As we have mentioned in 1, the infinitival -en could be reduced to -e in ME. This is also true for the other verbal -en suffixes: the past participial -en, the plural indicative and the plural subjunctive -en. Smithers (1983) is very much concerned with the problem of -en and -e. In this chapter, I shall briefly examine his theory, and investigate a question invoked by a statement by ten Brink [1884 (1901)]. 2.1 Smithers’s theory on -en Smithers enumerates the contexts where graphic -en can appear; in (17) I reproduce his list in an abbreviated version (omitting some comments and the line numbers of further examples, but preserving his grouping, even though I disagree with its methodology – see below).12 11 12

Robinson does not notice that the -e of deere is the vocative inflection. He ignores the grammatical role of inflectional -e’s throughout his book. Smithers distinguished his types by Arabic numerals. In order to avoid ambiguity, these are replaced by Roman numerals throughout this paper. Where Smithers writes “vowels or diphthongs”, I simply write “vowels”, as it is a cover term for diphthongs as well in modern linguistic terminology. Smithers did not provide translations for his examples: the

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 21

(17) Phonetic and rhythmical contexts (Smithers 1983: 203–205) [lines quoted by Smithers from his own edition of HAVELOK] (I)

when -en is followed by an unaccented syllable with initial vowel: X

/

X

/

X

X

/

X

/

And he gart komen into the tun (1002) ‘And he got to come to town’ (II)

when followed by an unaccented syllable with initial h- + vowel: /

X

/

X

/

X

X

/

X

With the wende shulen he yern(e) (1347) ‘They will yearn to go with you’ (III) when followed by an unaccented syllable with initial consonant (other than h-) + vowel: /

X

/

X

X

/

X

/

0

Ther he greten for hunge r and cold (449) ‘There they cry for hunger and cold’ (IV) when -en is the second of two unaccented syllables, and is followed by an accented syllable (IVa) with initial vowel: X

/

X

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

0

And men haue den of him mikel dred(e) (181) ‘And people were very much afraid of him’ (IVb) with initial h-: X

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

Wolden he nomore0 to putting gang(e) (1058) ‘They would not go to throw again’ (IVc) with initial consonant (other than h-) + vowel: X

/

X

X

/

X

/

X

/

That ye aren comen to me now (161) ‘That you have come to me now’ translations are mine. Note that in this text, he is both the 3rd sg. masc. and the 3rd pl. personal pronoun (see especially IVb and VIb). The Even Yearbook 9 (2010), Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest ISSN 2061–490X, http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even, © 2010, Gyöngyi Werthmüller

Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 22

(V) when followed by an accented syllable with any initial consonant: X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

And putten with a mikel ston (1024) ‘And they threw with a great stone’ (VI) when followed by an accented syllable (VIa) with initial vowel: X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

0

And mikel sorwe haue den all(e) (238) ‘And they all had great sorrow’ (VIb) with initial h- + vowel: X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

He wrungen honde0s and wepen sor(e) (152) ‘They wrung their hands and wept bitterly’ For ease of understanding, see the following table, summarising Smithers’s types. Stress pattern

Preceding syll is

Next word begins with

Next word’s 1st syll is V

/xx

accented

-en

unaccented

xx/

unaccented

-en

accented

/x/

accented

-en

accented

I kómen intó IVa hav’den óf VIa háv’den álle

C (not h) II III shúlen he gréten for IVb IVc wolden aren hé cómen VIb V wrúngen pútten hóndes wíth hV

Smithers’s (1983: 205–208) basic idea is that where -en would make one of two unstressed syllables, the letter -n was unnecessarily inserted by a scribe: the poet intended only an -e. This -e, if it is prevocalic, gets elided; if it is preconsonantal, it is apocopated. He thinks that unnecessary scribal insertion The Even Yearbook 9 (2010), Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest ISSN 2061–490X, http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even, © 2010, Gyöngyi Werthmüller

Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 23

of -n is also possible in type V, “since the metrically obligatory unaccented syllable is equally well supplied by -e” (1983: 206). Before turning our attention to this theory and the problems it faces, let us notice that in the article mistakes appear, caused by Smithers’s ignoring some of his own data. He notes the following: “What is extremely significant is that in types I, II, III, and IVc -en makes one of two successive unstressed syllables” (Smithers 1983:206). This comment is correct, as far as it goes: but Smithers fails to notice that in IVa and IVb it does so, too. The same lack of attention on his part is visible when he writes: “In type I, if -e was the author’s form, it could (and would) have been fused with the following initial vowel by elision. In type II, when initial h- was ‘dropped’ (as it can be, and intermittently is, today), the result would have been as in type I. […] in types III and IVc elision of the -e in the -en is phonetically not possible13 (because of the following consonant) […]” (Smithers 1983: 205). Here, Smithers wishes to list the contexts where elision is possible (if the -n is considered to be merely graphical), but again he omits IVa and IVb. In (17), a methodological inconsistency also appears. Three groups could be made: one in which -en is the first of the unaccented syllables (I)–(III); one in which -en is the second of the unaccented syllables (IV); and one in which -en is the only unaccented syllable (V)–(VI). Since in all these contexts -en is followed by the same types of segmental material, each group should be divided into an equal number of types. This is shown by the table above. Smithers’s (1983: 205–208) idea that unstressed -en (as it stands in the manuscripts), if it is next to another unstressed syllable, is really an -e, while truly pronounced -en is only necessary if it has to fill a hiatus, may seem to be attractive, but it poses some problems. Two unstressed syllables next to each other, if they have to occupy the same metrical position (unlike in the rejected scansion in (14)) make a line hypermetrical: and Smithers seems to be oblivious of the fact that lines exist in which neither of the two successive unstressed syllables is (or would be) an -en. For instance, he scans hunger (III) and hondes (VIb) as monosyllabic, but he does not justify this. In these cases, he would be unable to invoke elision. About hunger, it could be supposed that the -e is syncopated – but seeing the tokens in CT, one cannot consider this to be a tendency, so an explanation would be necessary. In CT, altogether 21 non-line-final instances of hondes, handes, londes and landes appear: of these, only two are monosyllabic. Hunger has 6 occurrences, none of which are monosyllabic. Nevertheless, I could accept Smithers’s argument about -n’s being only scribal insertions in syllables which make a line hypermetrical, and whose -e could be dropped (elided or apocopated) without the -n coda, if he 13

Phonetically, -e could be dropped – phonologically, elision would indeed not be possible.

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 24

had pointed out that there are a significantly greater number of (would-be) hypermetric lines with -en than without -en. Smithers (1983: 207), to prove his theory, shows cases where the -n is surely spurious: he is both the 3rd sg. masculine and the 3rd pl. nominative pronoun, but the -en inflection (in HAVELOK) can only express plural. Therefore, he + verb + -en, if he is singular, is corrupt. Smithers (1983: 208) believes that the only role of -en (both in speech and verse) was to fill a hiatus: hence he does not think that the -en was authorially intended in type V either, because – no elision being possible here – an -e would have sufficed. Everybody who has dealt with the structure of at least one language could list countless examples where less material would suffice, yet the language resorts to more. In standard Modern German, one says and writes Sie singen mit dem Lehrer, yet *Sie singe mit dem Lehrer (‘they sing with the teacher’) would suffice just as much as and putte with a mikel ston (‘and they threw with a great stone’) in type V would: yet singen, and not singe, is the standard use. Another question is, why the hiatus ought to be avoided at all. Smithers himself admits that “incontestable cases of hiatus are very common in HAV[ELOK]” (1983: 206).14 Minkova (1987: 454) claims that “there is no evidence in English, at any point in its history, for any phonotactic constraint on hiatus, word internally or across word boundaries. Nor is there any universal, or even a tendency, for languages to disallow hiatus; in fact languages with and without hiatus are about evenly distributed”. Up to this point we maintained that elision operates in order for the hiatus to be avoided. This is the traditional working definition – but it is inaccurate. Hiatus refers to two vowels next to each other, which can occur within one word ([leu
n] – leoun, meaning ‘lion’), or across word boundary (citee of, to eten – ‘city of’, ‘to eat’). This paper is not concerned with how these may have been pronounced – whether, for instance, the hiatus was filled by a glottal stop (as in Modern German) or not. But English has had no general tendency to avoid two vowels occurring next to each other (hiatus sites have always been present). What is to be observed, however, is that in some accents of British English (RP, for instance), VV sequences do not occur at all if the first vowel is a schwa. The indefinite article is not /ə/ but /ən/ before a vowel-initial word (an evening as opposed to *a evening); the article the has a long [i
] in the same environment ([ði
] as opposed to *[ðə] evening); otherwise, an intrusive [r] is pronounced between the schwa and the next vowel (China[r] and Japan). The situation is not that straight-forward though: historically speaking, an and not a was the default for the indefinite article; and intrusive [r] is present after 14

See also (3d1).

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 25

[ɑ
] and [
], too: mama[r] and papa, draw[r] it. Nevertheless, this can certainly not be termed a general rule for avoiding hiatus. In ME, due to word-final -e not yet having been lost, most occurrences of hiatus across word boundary would have entailed that the first vowel was a schwa. Smithers does not go into detail about the definition of hiatus, but it is highly probable that he means it only in this narrowed sense (as does our definition of elision). It is beyond doubt that hiatus across word boundary is infrequent in ME verse (see (3d1)): but if we remember that it did exist; that in the manuscripts -en does not only appear at places where it can fill a hiatus; and that languages do not always work economically, then we have good reasons to doubt that the -en was exclusively intended by the author as a hiatus-filler: that is, in type V, where -en does not make the line hypermetrical, but -e would have sufficed, the -n may well have been also intended by the author, not inserted accidentally by a scribe. 2.2 h- and the question of hiatus In order to investigate how frequent hiatus actually was in ME verse, the question of word-initial h- also ought to be settled. As discussed in 1.1, and shown in (17), elision is supposed to take place before a vowel and an initial h-. This suggests that initial h- is not pronounced, so words beginning in h- in fact begin in a vowel. But the analysis needs to be more fine-grained: Guthrie (1988: 92) mentions “hard h-”, and his context lets us believe that before hard h- elision did not operate. But as (18) shows, this is still not satisfactory. (18) -e before h(a) -e is retained X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

PRAISE OF PEACE, 51) ‘Among the princes on this earth here’ (b) -e is dropped X

/

/

lat

X

/

X

li|tel

/

child

X

/ 0

heer

X

thee| (CT, II. 859) ‘Let my little child live here with you’

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 26

In (18a) and (18b), the h-initial word is the same: heer (spelling is irrelevant). In (18a) the schwa of erthe is lexical; in (18b) the (elided) schwa is a grammatical ending, the infinitive marker. If we assume that this initial h- was not pronounced, then (18a) contains a hiatus; the -e preceding it does not get elided, whereas that in (18b) does. We have to note, however, that in (18b), dwelle0, a lexical verb, fills a weak position, and two weak syllables next to each other are not allowed in an iamb, so the -e gets dropped. Dwelle can fill a weak position because it has a low information content: whereas here can be focussed. The secondary literature tends to explain the elision before h- along the description of ten Brink [1884 (1901: §269)]: “[…] weak e is also elided before following h. This affects in English words chiefly the initial h in he, him, his, hire, here, hem, […] how, heer, and various forms of the verb have, in Romance words the mute h as in honour, honest, humble, humilitee etc. […] It is noteworthy that the aspirated French h also occasionally permits of elision [harneys]”. The English words in ten Brink’s list are most often unstressed; so are the initial syllables of the listed French words. Schwas which are elided would be unstressed if they were pronounced, but two unstressed (metrically weak) syllables are never located next to each other. Elision is a process which helps to avoid this situation. It follows from the metre (and often from the phonology) that the syllable preceding the final (elidable) -e is stressed.15 In other words, then, elision makes room for the unstressed syllable following the elided -e. Since the listed h-initial words (can) also begin with an unstressed syllable, their first syllable can fill that space. Hence, the tendency seems to be that elision operates before those h-initial words whose first syllable is unstressed. But this leads on to the question of what happens to a final -e before unstressed syllables not beginning in h- (or in a vowel, in which case elision must operate, so that issue is ignored here), as in (19). (19) Elision impossible X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

II. 817) ‘O, good Custance, alas! I am so sad’ 0

0

Goode Custance is a vocative phrase, in which the adjective ought to receive an inflectional word-final -e. In (19), this -e would be one of two successive unstressed syllables, and it is the only one in its surroundings (goode Cu-) 15

See (23) for a possible exception.

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 27

which can be left unrealised: since it is not followed by a vowel, this must be an instance of apocope. This may suggest that final -e before h-, which, most frequently, gets dropped under the same metrical circumstances (i.e. when the next word is, or begins with, an unstressed syllable), does not really elide, but apocopates: and the fact that the next consonant is initial h- is just coincidental. We must note that – as listed by ten Brink – the elision rule operates before frequently used function words such as hire (‘her’) or have. It is probable that – as it is often the case in Modern English as well – the initial h- of these words did not have to be pronounced, they could begin in a vowel. Moreover, before the word herte, for instance, no obvious elision occurs either in CONFESSIO or CT. There are ambiguous examples, where either the -e or the preceding consonant is syllabic (as in tendre? herte); and the -e is dropped in the genitive pronouns (hire0 herte): but that -e is normally dropped in any other context. Nevertheless, this analysis faces at least one crucial problem: in ME, words beginning in h- were not preceded by the determiners a, my, thy: they took an, mine, thine, like vowel-initial words. A search for the string “my h” in the entire CORPUS text of CT (see References) yields one single occurrence: my hand, which may be a mistake for the normal myn hand, made by a medieval scribe or a modern editor. This result may imply that word-initial hwas not pronounced at all, even in words which begin in a stressed syllable. But perhaps we are experiencing a similar phenomenon as in Modern English, when people, reading out the phrases an hotel or an historical fact, although they pronounce [ən] and not [ə], sound the [h], too. The problem definitely needs a more in-depth scrutiny. 2.3 Ten Brink’s statement on the participial -en Ten Brink observes the following concerning participial -en: “Final weak e often becomes mute immediately after the tonic syllable, and in the following cases it is never syllabic [that is, never pronounced – my comment]: […] In the strong P[ast] P[articiple] of verbs with an originally short root, when the -n is apocopated: come, drive, write, stole etc. (but on the other hand, comen, driven, writen are naturally dissyllabic and stolen occurs beside stoln)” [1884 (1901: §260)]. The present paper, like ten Brink’s book, has drawn conclusions about pronunciation by assuming the existence of a regular metre. The above observation, however, cannot be confirmed or refuted by the same method: the question here is not whether a syllable was present or absent, because both comë and comen are disyllabic; but whether it did or did not have a specific coda (in a specific grammatical role).

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 28

It must be mentioned that in the case of the verb come the stem vowel (short [u]) of the participle and the infinitival forms is identical: both of them can end in -en ([kumən]), -e ([kumə]); they can be monosyllabic ([kum]). The infinitive and plural indicative and subjunctive can be disyllabic ([kumə]), and only the homophonous participial disyllabic -ë form ([kumə]) is ruled out by ten Brink. His statement is summarised in (20). (20) Ten Brink’s findings

1 syll 2 syll’s 2 syll’s

Infinitive come0 comë comen

Past Pple come0 comen

To illustrate this with an example: according to ten Brink, (21b) is impossible for Chaucer (no example can be found in the CORPUS edition of CT either); but the form (disyllabic comë) has ample appearances in Peck’s (2000) critical edition of CONFESSIO. (21) Short-stemmed participial form in ME (a) Original line /

X

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

1355) ‘When Arcite arrived in Thebe’ 0

(b) Impossible for ten Brink, found in one manuscript (Ha4)16 /

X

X

/

16

X 0

/

X

/

X

/

Let me express my thanks to Rosamund Allen, who kindly made her collated manuscripts of the KNIGHT’S TALE available for me. The collation was prepared as part of a Leverhulme Funded project titled AUTHORIAL AND SCRIBAL METRICAL PRACTICE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS; only parts of which were published.

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 29

© Cf. its appearance in Gower X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

1406) ‘Which has now come to my mind’ Ten Brink’s discovery may be more significant than he might have supposed. I believe that nobody is able to find phonetic material which would prove that Chaucer did not use disyllabic forms such as comë: the metre does not help to decide whether a non-syllabic consonant ([n]) was actually pronounced. What the data may reveal is that in the manuscripts examined by ten Brink, no participial form of these short-stemmed strong verbs appears which ends in -e and should be read disyllabically. Ten Brink compared the most reliable manuscripts – and the present study cannot undertake an extensive manuscript examination. But my comparison of 10 manuscripts of Chaucer’s THE KNIGHT’S TALE revealed that (21b) appears in a manuscript ten Brink did not examine. Nevertheless, ten Brink may have found a systematic gap in manuscripts. But the manuscripts were produced after the lifetime of Chaucer, which implies that Chaucer may have used these forms, which were found ungrammatical by later scribes. Unlike Chaucer, Gower could revise his extant manuscripts, and the fact that Peck’s (2000) edition contains a number of examples of the disyllabic participial comë suggests that Gower used such forms, too, not only such disyllabic forms as comen; therefore one might reasonably assume that his contemporary, Chaucer did so, too, and ten Brink found only that the scribes regularised Chaucer’s use, having inserted -n everywhere. However, perhaps (22), which examines the (superficially) monosyllabic tokens of the participle come, also suggests that forms such as disyllabic comë were indeed not part of Chaucer’s grammar. These forms could be monosyllabic, either because final -e got dropped, or because it was underlyingly not present. (22) come (past part.) in CT (total: 31 times) (a) -e0 #V (elision): 21 times X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

I. 23) ‘At night had come to that hostel’

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 30

(b) -e0 #C (apocope): 10 times X

/

/

day X

X

/

come

X 0

/

X

hom|ward

/

moste

X 0

tour|ne| (CT, III. 988) ‘The day had come that he had to turn homewards’ (22b) shows that approximately in one third of the instances (10 out of 31), the -e of come was followed by a consonant, so the underlying schwa – if it was there at all – had to apocopate due to metrical pressure. But perhaps one third is significant enough for us to stipulate that the -e was not present underlyingly in any of the examples: that is, no elision took place, and the form [kum] was followed by a vowel 21 times without any metrical significance. In future research, more verbs must be examined from this perspective, and the question is worthy of a thorough manuscript research. But if ten Brink’s statement is true, then there is at least one minor detail where most manuscripts agree – which is important because in minor details manuscripts usually diverge. Furthermore, we have seen that -n instead of -e may not only have a phonological role (hiatus-filler), but also a grammatical one. Hence ten Brink’s observation undermines Smithers’s (1983) theory introduced above: it refutes his view that the only reason for writing -en instead of -e was to fill the hiatus.

3 Schwa stressed? A problem with modern theories of poetic metre is that they do not pay enough attention to what cannot fill a strong position. Halle & Keyser (1966, 1972), though they started out from Chaucerian lines, did not consider it a great metrical offence if an unstressed syllable occupied a strong position (if the neighbouring syllables were not unstressed). They did not really distinguish the degrees of being unstressed. Their main concern was for a stressed syllable not to occupy a weak position between two unstressed syllables: in their theory, only that offence made a line unmetrical. Kiparsky’s first metrical rule (1975: 583) says that “a primary stress can be freely replaced by any other stress” – which includes zero stress, too. It can be seen that these authors are not really interested in ME – in which schwa, the most unstressed vowel, occurs much more frequently than in later stages of English: that is, researchers of later English metre do not have to be that much concerned with unstressed syllables as the researcher of ME metre.

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 31

Infrequently though, schwa could probably fill a strong position in Chaucer’s and Gower’s English poetry. The question is so unsettled that modern scholars cannot even unambiguously decipher ten Brink’s [(1884) 1901] opinion, let alone that of Chaucer. According to Ian Robinson (1971: 91) ten Brink believed that a weak -e could fill a strong position, whose effect is “to turn -e into -er, that is, to give the sound more prominence than we can believe it to have had in speech” (1971: 99). (In modern phonetic terms Robinson’s statement probably means “to turn [ə] into [з
]”.) Robinson does not cite where he thinks ten Brink suggests that an -e can fill a strong position. On the other hand, Guthrie (1988: 389) maintains that in ten Brink’s (implicitly expressed) view a weak -e cannot fill a strong position. The section of ten Brink’s book from which Guthrie drew this conclusion (§194) describes what can occupy a strong position: and weak -e is not listed. I agree with Guthrie, but I believe that there is a more direct hint in ten Brink: “cf., for instance, weddede [A. 868], where [the manuscripts] read wedded, and the verse seems to require the complement of a monosyllable” [1884 (1901: §256)]. The line referred to by ten Brink is shown in (23). (23) Chaucerian schwa (?) in strong position X

/

X

/

X

/

‘And wedded the queen Hyppolita’

X 0

/

X

/

Ten Brink seems to suggest that weddede is disyllabic: the -e is not pronounced. It is admitted by many metrists that there are lines which will have the required number of syllables only if a weak -e fills a strong position: (23) is one of these lines. Such lines do not occur frequently, and it would probably be inconsiderate to assume that such strong -e’s are indeed stressed. About (23) it was pointed out to me17 that weddede is followed by a major phrase boundary, a dramatic caesura, in anticipation of a new piece of information. Perhaps this phrase boundary (a pause in performance) licenses the weak syllable in the strong position. It is not my intention here to set up a hypothesis concerning the reason and the pronunciation of the Chaucerian final schwa in strong position: my aim is to claim that in CONFESSIO, a weak -e never fills a strong position, except in the case of the word the, as can be seen in (24).

17

By Dr Ádám Nádasdy (personal consultation).

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 32

(24) Strong schwa (?) in Gower (in CONFESSIO II. (3530 lines)) (a) Unambiguous (6 cases): X

/

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

‘Now after pride the second (one)’ (b) Ambiguous (4 cases): ?

?

X

/

X

/

X

/

X

0

‘That the greatest of Barbary’ I believe there are ambiguous cases, when the first (and possibly the third) foot is shared by the and another function word: these are potential inversion sites, so it cannot be decided which part of the foot is more prominent. Because in Gower, the -e of the was the only final -e able to fill a strong position, it is possible that Gower used two versions of the; one with schwa (in weak position, which was significantly more frequent) and one with a full vowel in strong position (similarly to Modern English, see 2.1). In order for us to make generalisations about their appearance in Gower, all instantiations of the strong the should be found and examined. However, it is striking that in the first 500 lines of the Prologue of CONFESSIO, five unambiguous cases can be found (compared to the six unambiguous cases of the 2530 lines of book II). The Prologue is a rhetorical text, examining the church and the people; (24a) also has an elevated tone, opening the description of the second deadly sin. So perhaps here the register has a decisive role in the choice of the poet – strong the is more frequent in Gower’s rhetorical verse.

4 Conclusions A definite short-coming of the present paper is that it does not gather data from manuscripts, but relies on critical editions instead (see References). This, undoubtedly, makes it seem less authoritative, since metrical divergences may remain unnoticed. Bearing in mind, however, that manuscripts diverge from one another (and there is no extant MS that Chaucer would have seen – Gower could supervise some of his MSS), we cannot think in terms of exact numbers, but only in terms of tendencies. This means that examining manuscripts would not have influenced these findings significantly. This paper, like any other paper on word-final -e, probably contains more questions than answers: for instance, instead of coming up with (and in order to be able to find) a solution for the question of hiatus, it had to tackle the The Even Yearbook 9 (2010), Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest ISSN 2061–490X, http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even, © 2010, Gyöngyi Werthmüller

Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 33

issue of h- being pronounced or not. Nonetheless, I have argued that, as traditional historical linguists maintain, word-final -e is more than a metrical device: it has grammatical importance. I have shown that -en (which, as a verbal suffix, is a “synonym” of -e) is more than a simple hiatus-filler. We have also seen that in ME there may have been two allomorphs of the article the. All the questions concerning -e need a much thorougher research than this paper can afford.

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References Barber, Charles and Nicholas Barber. 1990. The versification of the Canterbury Tales: a computerised statistical study. Leeds Studies in English 21: 81-103. Brink, Bernhard Aegidius Konrad ten. 1901. The language and metre of Chaucer. 2nd edn. (translated by M. Bentinck Smith) London: MacMillan and Co. Originally published: 1884. Chaucers Sprache und Verskunst. Leipzig: T. O. Weigel. Cable, Thomas. 1991. The English alliterative tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Farrington Babcock, Charlotte. 1914. A study of the metrical use of the inflectional e in Middle English, with particular reference to Chaucer and Lydgate. MLA 29: 59–92. Gower, John. 2005. In praise of peace. In: Kathleen Forni (ed.). The Chaucerian apocrypha: a selection. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications for TEAMS. Available online: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm. Last accessed: 23.05. 2010. Guthrie, Stephen R. 1988. Babcock’s curve and the problem of Chaucer’s final -e. English Studies 5: 386–395. Halle, Morris and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1966. Chaucer and the study of prosody. College English 28: 187–219. Halle, Morris and Samuel Jay Keyser. 1972. The iambic pentameter. In: William Kurtz Wimsatt (ed.). Versification: major language types. New York: Modern Language Association. 217–237 Herzman, Ronald B., Graham Drake and Eve Salisbury (eds.). Havelok the Dane. In: Four romances of England. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. Available online: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/danefrm.htm. Last accessed: 23.05. 2010. Kiparsky, Paul. 1975. Stress, syntax and meter. Language 51: 576-615. Minkova, Donka. 1987. The prosodic character of early schwa deletion in English. In: Anna Giacalone-Ramat, Onforio Carruba and Giuliano Bernini (eds.). Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 445–458. Minkova, Donka. 2000. Middle English prosodic innovations and their testability in verse. In: Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta and Matti Rissanen (eds.). Placing Middle English in context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 431-461. Peck, Russell A. (ed.). 2000. John Gower: Confessio Amantis. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. Available online: http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm. Last accessed: 23.05.2010. Robinson, Fred Norris (ed.). 1957. The works of Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Available online: 1993. In: Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. University of Michigan. http://name.umdl.umich.edu/CT. Last accessed: 23.05.2010. Robinson, Ian. 1971. Chaucer’s prosody: a study of the Middle English verse tradition. Cambridge: CUP. Southworth, James Granville. 1947. Chaucer’s final e in rhyme. PMLA 62: 910–935. Southworth, James Granville. 1954. Verses of Cadence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Southworth, James Granville. 1962. The prosody of Chaucer and his followers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Werthmüller: An analysis of word-final -e in ME verse, in Gower and Chaucer 35 Southworth, James Granville. 1964. Chaucer: a plea for a reliable text. College English 26: 173–179 Smithers, Geoffrey Victor. 1983. The scansion of Havelok and the use of ME -en and -e in Havelok and by Chaucer. In: Douglas Gray and Eric Gerald Stanley (eds.). Middle English studies presented to Norman Davis in honour of his seventieth birthday. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 195–234. Tyrwhitt, Thomas. 1775. An Essay on the language and versification of Chaucer. In: The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. In four volumes. London: T. Payne and Son. Vol. IV: 1– 111. Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. 2008. Middle English Iambic metre – intrametrical and linguistic problems. The Even Yearbook 8: 1–28. Available online: http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even/2008.htm. Last accessed: 23.05.2010. Windeatt, Barry A. 1977. “Most conservatyf the soun”: Chaucer’s Troilus metre. Poetica (Tokyo) 8: 44–60.

Gyöngyi Werthmüller Eötvös Loránd University

werthmuller.gyongyi@chello.hu

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