Intoduction

3.1 Stress in French loan-words.

The stress in French loan-words was shifted in conformity with the English rules of word accentuation,due to the rhythmic or recessive tendency.In Old French stress fell on the last syllable of a word,except words ending in –e,which are stressed on the last but one syllable,as ′terre “earth”.In English stress is shifted to the last but two syllable,which,accordingly,is the first of three-syllable words and the second of four-syllable ones.This shift did not take place at once.It appears that a secondary stress developed on the first(or second) syllable while the main stress remained on the last.Eventually the secondary stress became the main one,while the main was reduced to the state of secondary;finally the stress on the last syllable disappeared altogether.Rhythm and rhymes in poetical works,notably in Chaucer’s,give valuable information on this point.

If the first syllable happened to be a verbal prefix,it remained unstressed;a nominal prefix would receive the stress.For example; ho′nour “honour”,co′rage “courage”,nature “nature”,pre′sent(v),present(n).

In the course of time the borrowed forms from French changed their stress from a final stress (which later developed into an equal stress for all syllables in Modern French) to the more common initial stress typical of all Germanic words in English. Thus words like punish, manner which had original stress on the second syllable came to be stressed on the first syllable and retained this into Modern English. Note that initial stress in English refers to the first syllable of a word stem. This has meant that words like conversion, depletion which are French loans with original final stress came to be pronounced with stress on the second syllable as this was regarded as the stem syllable. With disyllabic words the stress may thus remain on the final syllable for the reason just outlined, cf. revert, review, conduct, precede. Later on an independent development in English is to be noted whereby verbs and nouns of French origin are distinguished when they are segmentally similar by virtue of different stress. Here initial stress is characteristic of nouns while final stress is used for verbs, cf. convert, convert; conduct, conduct. The principle outlined here are not watertight, however, that is one finds initial stress on apparent prefixes in words like precedence and no difference in stress between disyllabic nouns and verbs in pairs like review, review; address, address.