The Phonology of Old English Stress and Metrical Structure

This book attempts to build a complete theory of stress in Old English. In particular, the author tries to elucidate the relation, in that language, between stress placement and syllable weight. Eventually, he finds that the syllable should be abandoned as the central notion of Old English metrical phonology and replaced with the mora as an independent unit of phonological quantity. These findings are then applied to a new, phonologically-based analysis of the rhythm of Old English poetry.

Autorentext

The Author: Piotr Gasiorowski was born in 1960 and educated at Warsaw Polytechnic and Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan (Poland). In 1988 he joined the staff of Poznan University in the School of English (Department of Modern Languages), where he is still teaching English. In 1994 he received his Ph.D in English Studies. He has written articles on the historical phonology of English and on Indo-European phonology.

Inhalt
Contents: Analysis of Old English syllable structure and stress patterns - A new metrical theory of Old English stress, based on a count of moras - An exhaustive description of stress-dependent phonological phenomena in the language - A novel analysis of the verse patterns of Old English poetry.