Учебное пособие для специальностей «Переводческое дело» и«Иностранный язык: два иностранных языка»
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New ÐоÑгÑÐ»Ñ Ð.Ð. ÐоÑобие по оÑновам ÑеоÑии изÑÑаемого ÑзÑка
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- UNIT 10. PHONETIC SYSTEM IN MIDDLE ENGLISH § 1. Word stress
| § 4. The article
In ME an indefinite article arose. As in many other languages, it originated from the numeral ān „one‟ (in some dialects ōn) . First signs of such development were already seen in OE. Then long ā in unstressed position was shortened, and there appeared an unstressed variant an. When an was followed by a word beginning with a consonant, the –n was dropped, and there arose the variant a . As for the definite article, it lost all of its OE gender characteristics and forms. This was due to the loss of inflections in the nouns. Thus only one form, that is Modern English the , forced out the many forms of the Old English article. UNIT 10. PHONETIC SYSTEM IN MIDDLE ENGLISH § 1. Word stress The English sound system has undergone profound changes in the thousand years which have passed since the OE period. The changes affected the systems of vowel and consonant phonemes, pronunciation of words and word accentuation. In OE stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable: the prefix or the root of the word were stressed while the suffixes and endings were unstressed. This way of word accentuation was considerably altered in the further periods. The word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. These changes were connected with the phonetic assimilation of thousands of loan-words (namely French) adopted during the ME period. Probably, when these loans initially entered the English language they retained their original stress – on the ultimate or pen-ultimate syllable. But this kind of stress could not be preserved for long and, gradually, as the borrowed words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word in line 39 with the English system: e.g. vertu [ver´tju:] became NE virtue [„və:t∫ə]. This process is known as the “recessive” tendency. In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the “rhythmic” tendency, which required a regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Under it, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. This new stress was either preserved as a secondary stress or became later the only or the principal stress of the word. Sometimes the shifting of the word stress should be attributed not only to the phonetic tendencies but also to certain morphological factors. Thus stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowed or built in late ME and in early NE, which accords with the OE rule: to keep verb prefixes unstressed, e.g. the verb pre’sent . However, corresponding nouns sometimes received the stress on the first syllable: e.g. NE ΄present , n - pre΄sent, v; ΄ discord , n - dis΄cord, v. The latter pairs of words show that the role of word accentuation had grown: word stress performed a phonological function as it distinguished a verb from a noun. жүктеу/скачать 1,38 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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