Linguistics 300, F12, Undergraduate tutorial

Linguistics 300, F12, Assignment 8

Assignment
Concordances
- Chaucer concordance
- Shakespeare concordance
Links to tutorials on meter and scanning

Assignment

In the last assignment, you collected information concerning the etymology and synchronic (British) stress on "your" set of French loanwords. In this assignment, you will collect data on how these words were stressed in earlier stages of English - for Middle English as represented by Chaucer and for Early Modern English as represented by Shakespeare. Add the information to the same spreadsheet that you created for Assignment 7. Please don't change any of the columns, since we need to be able to take all of your worksheets, and concatenate them for everyone in the class without any preprocessing. Figuring out the stress patterns for Chaucer and Shakespeare encompasses three stages, described in more detail below. The first stage consists of simply collecting citations for the individual words from online concordances of Chaucer's (Middle English) and Shakespeare's (Early Modern English) works. The second stage consists of noting any special characteristics of the citations that will affect the amount of information we can glean from them. The final stage consists of actually determining (as far as possible) a word's stress in the earlier stages of English.

It is probably easiest and fastest to do the three stages (especially the last stage) on separate passes through the data, but use your own judgment in how you organize the work. Eventually, you will add the information from the third stage to the same worksheet as the information from the last assignment.

Look up "your" words in the concordances for Chaucer and Shakespeare and record the results somewhere; it's fine to use a separate worksheet in your spreadsheet. For Chaucer, use the entire Canterbury Tales (except for the Parson's Tale and the Tale of Melibee, which are in prose). For Shakespeare, you can use all of his work (plays and poems), keeping in mind that not all material from the plays is in blank verse. Some of it is prose and can't be used for our purposes.
- Please look up even those words that have no synchronic stress information, as they might still occur in the concordances.
- As you've already had a chance to see from some of the OED entries, earlier stages of English exhibited quite a bit of spelling variation, so look up and down the entries (in the Chaucer concordance) and use wildcard characters in your searches as appropriate (in the Shakespeare concordance).
At this stage, note special properties of the citations that will affect how much information we can glean from each citation. Here are some considerations to bear in mind. See the tutorials on meter and scanning for more information.
- In general, iambic pentameter gives us conclusive information concerning stress for words with two syllables, since there are only two ways that such words can fit the meter (either the first syllable falls on a weak beat and the second syllable falls on the following strong beat, or vice versa). When a word has more than two syllables, we can tell where the alternating stresses go, but we generally can't tell which of these stresses is primary. But if a word rhymes with another one, it becomes possible to tell where the primary stress falls. So make a note of any rhyme information for the particular citation for which it is relevant (for instance, "rhymes with moon").
- Elision can also give us information concerning word stress, since only unstressed syllables can be elided. Again, make relevant notes (for instance, "penultimate elided").
- Chaucer is quite strict about matching stressed and unstressed syllabes to the metrical template of iambic pentameter (or tetrameter). Later poets, however, allowed themselves a bit more freedom. For instance (among other variations), Shakespeare allows the first foot of iambic pentameter to be either an iamb or a trochee (see Meter and scanning for links to more information). Because of this, if a word occupies the first foot in Shakespeare, we can't tell anything about the stress on those two syllables. It's fine to include the citations in question, but you should accompany them with a relevant note (for instance, "first foot") and you shouldn't count them towards your total of 10 citations per headword.
- Some lines won't scan because they aren't in meter at all!
This is the most challenging part of the assignment, where you figure out what the data from the citations tell you about the stress pattern for the word.
For Chaucer, distinguish between verse-medial occurrences of a word and ones where the word rhymes. For Shakespeare, there is no need to make this distinction, since word stress in Shakespeare is largely unaffected by the word's position in the verse.
The guiding principle for this part of the assignment is to make the most informative choice that is consistent with the evidence. On the one hand, you shouldn't force a choice between two possibilities if you don't have evidence for the choice. On the other hand, you shouldn't avoid making a choice if you do have relevant evidence.
- Ambiguous word stress. As noted earlier, sometimes it is clear that stress can't fall on some syllable(s), but it isn't clear which syllable bears the primary stress. For instance, in the following line of iambic pentameter, the made-up trisyllabic word gavondier can't be stressed on the penultimate syllable (2) because that syllable scans weak.
  And 'thus, the 'gavon'dier pro'claimed his 'right to 'rule
  
  Both adjacent syllables scan strong, but it isn't clear whether the stress falls on the ultimate syllable (1) or on the antepenultimate (3). In such cases, it is important to record only the information that you have evidence for, and no more. In a case like this, record "amb(1,3)" (short for "ambiguous between 1 and 3").
- Variable word stress. An ambiguous case like the one just discussed is conceptually distinct from a case of variation. In an ambiguous case, there is no way to know from the data which syllable bears the primary stress. In a case of variation, on the other hand, the data gives unambiguous evidence for more than one stress pattern. For instance, in the following two lines, the made-up word gavon scans as S-W in the first line, but as W-S in the second line. Such a case is therefore recorded as "var(1,2)".
  His 'stately 'way thus 'wended 'the ga'von (unambiguous evidence for 1)
  And 'thus, the 'gavon 'wends his 'stately 'way (unambiguous evidence for 2)
- Evidence from elision and rhyme. If the evidence for a word is mostly ambiguous, but there is information from elision or (in the case of Shakespeare) rhyme that nails the stress on the word, record the more informative choice with a comment in the column for the relevant author for the reason (see the existing spreadsheet for examples). Because we distinguish verse-medial position from rhyme position in Chaucer but not in Shakespeare, such cases are recorded slightly differently for the two authors, as shown below. Once again, we use made-up words.
  And 'thus, the 'malan'dier pro'claimed his 'right to 'rule (ambiguous between 1 and 3)
  His 'right to 'rule pro'claimed the 'malan'dier / and 'made his 'way to 'Rome with 'ample 'cheer (unambiguous evidence for 1)
  
  Chaucer verse-medial Chaucer rhyme Chaucer comments Shakespeare Shakespeare comments
  amb(1,3) 1 none needed 1 unamb 1 in S because of rhyme
  
  And 'thus, the 'foufi'nier pro'claimed his 'right to 'rule (ambiguous between 1 and 3)
  And 'that same 'fou(fi)nier 'made his 'way to 'Rome (unambiguous evidence for 3)
  
  Chaucer verse-medial Chaucer rhyme Chaucer comments Shakespeare Shakespeare comments
  3 n/a unamb 3 verse-medial in C because of elision 3 unamb 3 in S because of elision
  
  A more complicated case along the same lines would be:
  And 'thus, the 'loudi'vier pro'claimed his 'right to 'rule (ambiguous between 1 and 3)
  His 'right to 'rule pro'claimed the 'loudi'vier / and 'made his 'way to 'Rome with 'ample 'cheer (unambiguous evidence for 1)
  And 'that same 'lou(di)vier 'made his 'way to 'Rome (unambiguous evidence for 3)
  
  Chaucer verse-medial Chaucer rhyme Chaucer comments Shakespeare Shakespeare comments
  3 1 unamb 3 verse-medial in C because of elision var(1,3) var(1,3) in S because of rhyme and elision
- Complicated combinations. Though rare, even more complicated combinations are possible. For instance, a four-syllable word might in principle scan as ambiguous between 1 and 3 in some lines and ambiguous between 2 and 4 in others. This would be recorded as "(var(amb(1,3),amb(2,4))".
- Other difficult cases. Finally, the number of syllables might differ in the historical data from the number that you found for Modern British English, as in the following case. Please let us know if you come across other difficult cases, and we'll come up with appropriate conventions.
  - Words ending in -ion. In modern English, the i is a nonsyllabic glide (communion) or entirely lost, having merged with a preceding underlying t (pronunciation). But in earlier English (particularly Chaucer), the i can count as a syllable for the meter (although it was never stressable). In order to simplify the calculation of stress shift, we ignore the weak syllable in such cases (in other words, we take the modern syllable count as the baseline). An instance in Chaucer of verse-medial nacioun scanning as S-W-S would therefore be recorded as amb(1,2). It is worth noting that in practice, the great majority of these cases occur in rhyme position (rhyming with, say, moon) and end up being recorded as 1 in the "Chaucer stress, rhyme" column.