Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics)

.

226

5 Onset and cluster alliteration in OE

simplified, OE /wr-, wl-/ probably had a voiced rounded labiovelar fricative as their first element. Thus, though other accounts have highlighted the co-occurrence of obstruents as a relevant consideration in describing the behavior /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters, the reference to obstruency here is needed only in so far as it is tied up with voicing. All of the parameters discussed so far serve to describe the unmarkedness of /sp-, st-, sk-/. As noted earlier, the description of the properties that make these clusters common should be separated from the issue of why these clusters are cohesive. I will now turn to that issue. A most promising line in the search for a perceptually-based account of cohesiveness is pursued in recent work by Fleischhacker (2000, 2001). Her focus is on the behavior of obstruent–sonorant clusters, where the contiguity of the two types is crucial for defining cross-linguistic patterns of vowel epenthesis. Her study of loanword adaptation and interlanguage phonology shows that whenever epenthesis occurs, its site (prothesis or anaptyxis) is determined by the nature of the cluster. The idea is that the choice of epenthesis type maximizes the auditory similarity between the non-epenthesized input and the output. More specifically, obstruent–sonorant clusters allow epenthesis and do not display unitary behavior because the obstruent–sonorant juncture is acoustically very similar to an obstruent–vowel juncture. For English, for example a sequence like -pling [-pli ] is reasonably similar to [-pəli ]; in both instances, there is a perceptual break after the obstruent licensing optional epenthesis. In alliteration, clusters such as pl-, tr-, br-, etc. can be broken up because alliteration requires identity up to the first perceptual break. In Fleischhacker’s account the contiguity of obstruents in /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters, or the absence of a sonorant in the second position of the cluster, captures the cohesiveness of these clusters vacuously. She explicitly proposes that /s/ + stop clusters are particularly resistant to separation because they contain no cluster-internal perceptual breaks. This approach to the problem of cohesiveness is appealing and convincing and I will adopt it here in describing the differences in auditory similarity between the various possible word-initial clusters as they play themselves out in the alliterative practice of early English. Inverting the observation that obstruent–sonorant clusters are non-cohesive in alliteration because of the perceptual break they contain, we can posit a filter ∗ Perceptual Break which will cover the auditory reason for keeping /sp-, st-, sk-/ together in alliteration. (25)

∗ Pe r c e p t ual Br e ak: a cluster alliterating only with itself does not contain a perceptual break.

The constraint follows Fleischhacker (2001), who defines a perceptual break as a “perceptual event coinciding with the onset of vowel-like formant structure.”

5.4 Cluster constraints and cohesiveness of sp-, st-, sk-

227

The strength of a cluster-internal perceptual break depends on the composition of the cluster: the presence of a stop burst preceding the onset of formant structure enhances the break, and glides and liquids induce a stronger break than nasals. Fleischhacker’s definition is obviously the “universal” filter which a particular poetic tradition can accommodate in various ways. In that context, the constraint in (25) is a particular instantiation of a constraint of more general validity; it is not made up in an ad hoc manner just to cover the peculiarities of verse. Returning to the characterization of the /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters: if we were to ask what goes into rendering them cohesive, we can describe the situation with the help of the filters listed above. It is a mixed bag of factors which do not fit together into a canonical OT table at all, though I have borrowed some of the conventions familiar in OT. The crucial distinction between singleton and cluster alliteration is attributed to the absence of a perceptual break between the consonants in the clusters in the first row. This in itself would be sufficient to define /sp-, st-, sk-/ uniquely among the attested clusters. Of the well-formedness conditions only the overall sonority of a cluster is powerful enough to block the realization of a cluster. Unattested clusters like the ones in the bottom two rows are excluded on the basis of the perceptual difficulty of adjacent obstruents where both are of zero or minimal sonority. The table includes also factors which are relevant to the comparison between the cohesive clusters, the non-cohesive, but historically stable clusters in the second row, and the non-cohesive, historically unstable clusters of the third and the fourth rows. More specifically, one of the factors, ∗ Ident Non-Continuant, is useful because it highlights the differences between clusters that behave identically with respect to alliteration, i.e. they are noncohesive, but their histories bespeak important internal differences not captured by ∗ P e rcep tua l B reak. ∗ Ident Non-Continuant is a markedness condition on consonant coarticulation in stressed syllable onsets which will be relevant in the account of the history of /gn-, kn-/. The last two columns fill out the well-formedness picture by bringing in factors of concern in the earlier accounts which aimed to define the properties of /sp-, st-, sk-/. Negatively, Ident Voiceless licenses the appearance of /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters in the first place. Son-Seq is there to remind us that nothing in the behavior of /sp-, st-, sk-/, either in alliteration, or in relation to the other clusters, or historically, depends on that factor, in spite of the centrality of the constraints in earlier approaches to the same issues. Technically, just for comparing the degree of cohesiveness among the various onset clusters, the latter two constraints are not needed.

228

5 Onset and cluster alliteration in OE

Table 5.1 Cluster cohesion in Old English alliteration ∗ P erceptual ∗ Low ∗ Ident. Non- Ident SonBreak Sonority Continuant Voiceless Seq ∗

sp-, st-, skfr-, fl-, ␪r∗! br-, dr-, grpr-, tr-, kr-, kwsn-, sm- etc. gn-, kn85

∗

∗!

∗

∗

hw-, hr-, hl- hn- ∗ !

∗

(?)86

∗!

∗

(?)87

wr-, wl∗ pt-, ∗ tk-

∗!

∗ fk-, ∗ ht-

∗!

∗

∗ ∗

All of the clusters in the second row are obstruent–sonorant clusters, attested and stable throughout the history of the language. In Old English, they alliterate most commonly just on the first consonant because the clusters are non-cohesive; there is a sufficient break between the obstruent and the sonorant to allow identification of the first consonant as an autonomous alliterating unit. The clusters in the third and the fourth row are equally “breakable,” though their histories call for further discussion. The new elements in the inventory of factors that characterize the unique cohesive behavior of the clusters are then first, the absence of a perceptual break until after the stop, which disallows the singling out of the leftmost segment as a target of identity. Second, I have posited the presence of, and have assigned a role to, the constraint ∗ Low Sonority. It is not a constraint on cohesiveness; rather, it addresses a restriction on the range of possible clusters 85. To account fully for these clusters, one might need an additional constraint on the co-occurrence of velar stops and nasals. They represent a special issue which will be addressed in chapter 7. 86. For /hr-, hl-, hn-/ the violation will not occur if Old English was a voiceless velar fricative. If, however, the is a glottal approximant, which it may have become by late Old/early Middle English, the behavior of /hr-, hl-, hn-/ clusters with respect to Son-Seq becomes irrelevant, because they are not proper “clusters.” 87. The question mark is prompted by the uncertainty regarding the nature of the /w-/ initial segments in Old English. If the <w-> had the sonority of glides, then the /wr-, wl-/ clusters violate the sonority sequencing trajectory. If, on the other hand, [w] in initial position in Old English was an approximant with an appreciable degree of friction, then the same clusters will not violate Son-Seq.

5.4 Cluster constraints and cohesiveness of sp-, st-, sk-

229

in English. It is immediately obvious that ∗ Low Sonority could be satisfied easily by clusters whose second elements are sonorants, i.e. the most frequent type: pr-, kl-, sm-, etc. The last two rows in Table 5.1 intend to illustrate the fact that clusters such as ∗ pt-, ∗ fk-, attested cross-linguistically are not in the inventory of onset clusters in English: their combined sonority is too low to satisfy the language-specific minimal requirement expressed by ∗ Low Sonority . In this account, the puzzle of why in Old English (and Germanic) Son-Seq, a well-known markedness constraint, is allowed to be violated only by /sp-, st-, sk-/, becomes uninteresting. These clusters satisfy other markedness constraints which jointly override Son-Seq. Trying to account for cohesiveness through the prism of Son-Seq is on the right track only to the extent that a satisfaction of Son-Seq decreases the likelihood of cohesiveness. Essentially, however, these are two separate phonological parameters. The co-occurrence of a SonS eq violation with cohesiveness for /sp-, st-, sk-/ in English does not imply that all clusters which are in violation of Son-Seq will also be cohesive, nor that compliance with Son-Seq will result in non-cohesion.88 Why /sp-, st-, sk-/ should exist in spite of the Son-Seq violation, but clusters such as ∗ /rt-, rd-/ are unattested in English, is a genetic question which is quite outside the scope of the cohesion inquiry. In an account which separates the wellformedness questions from cohesiveness behavior there is no need to justify the cohesiveness by taking the Son-Seq violation as the starting-point as has been done in previous accounts. Analyzing <s-> as an invisible appendix to the cluster just so that it does not transgress against the phonotactic expectations is an unnecessary representational stratagem.89 Instead, the analysis proposed here treats Son-Seq as an acceptable violation dependent on a set of coarticulation factors which act together to ensure cluster well-formedness. Put differently, the lack of a perceptual break coexists 88. Fleischhacker’s (2001: 5) typology of vowel epenthesis with respect to consonant clusters shows the phenomenon as scalar, with Korean at one end of the scale, permitting epenthesis in all obstruent-initial clusters, including S+stop clusters. At the other end of the scale is Iraqi Arabic where all obstruent-initial clusters, including stop-sonorant clusters behave cohesively. 89. The perceptually-based account will accommodate the so-called s-mobile in Indo-European. Indo-European s, when it formed the first member of an initial consonant group, was “an unstable sound, and liable to disappear under conditions which it has not been possible accurately to define” (Burrow 1955: 80), though a recent study by Southern (1999) throws light on the conditions of survival and loss of the s-mobile. Under the assumption that the similarity of two onsets is not primarily a matter of their composition, but a consequence of the nature and timing of the perceptual break, the alternation between /s + C/ and /C/ appears less mysterious.

230

5 Onset and cluster alliteration in OE

with a violation of Son-Seq, but it also entails that other phonotactic conditions are met. /sp-, st-, sk-/ are good clusters because their joint sonority rises above a certain level, and because they do not violate phonotactic requirements incompatible with the violation of Son-Seq. Not all well-formed clusters behave cohesively, however. I have argued that various conditions combine to license the structure and produce the distinctive effect of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in Old English. Tabulating the phonotactic conditions allows us to attempt an evaluation of their relative importance; that aspect of the interaction of factors has not been addressed in earlier studies. The constraint on perceptual cohesiveness ∗ Pe r c e pt ual Br e ak defines a hierarchy which is revealing with respect to the unique properties of initial /sp-, st-, sk-/. Unlike the “appendix” account, this approach to the facts is not equivalent to a restatement of the problem. By focusing on the perceptual effect of coarticulation and the overall sonority of the clusters which violate Son-Seq, the account addresses directly the causes of the exceptional behavior of these clusters. At the same time, it accommodates the gradient behavior of other clusters with respect to cohesiveness – another interesting issue which can be tested on alliterative data. 5.5

Three-consonantal clusters: the [sl-] <–> [skl-] change

The cohesiveness of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in English, both historically and at present, is manifested further through the fact that only these clusters allow the addition of yet another consonant in the onset of the syllable. That consonant must be an approximant, and only /r/ and /l/ are really attested in that position in Old English.90 In Old English the matching of such three-consonantal edges required identity only up to the approximant: (26)

on stefn stigon; / str¯eamas wundon91 strang ond stiðmod. / gestah he on gealgan heanne92 and þæt spere sprengde, þæt hit sprang ong¯ean93

Beo 212 Dream 40 BM 137

The only possible segment at the left edge of triconsonantal clusters in modern English is the voiceless sibilant /s-/.94 One of the often cited advantages of 90. The clusters /skw-/, /skl-/ occur first in the fourteenth century, and /stj-/, /skj-/ are a seventeenthcentury development (Harris 1954: 97). 91. ‘on prow went up; / streams eddied’ 92. ‘strong and resolute / he climbed onto the high gallows’ 93. ‘and the spearhead thrust / so that it sprang back’ 94. Foreign borrowings with initial /ʃ/ such as Strauss, strudel, spritzer, Sprachgef¨uhl are quickly adapted to the phonotactics of English; [ʃtr-, ʃpr-] can be heard only in deliberately foreign pronunciations and do not belong in the native system.

5.5 The [sl-] <–> [skl-] change

231

the “appendix” account for /sp-, st-, sk-/ is that it eliminates the need to treat three-consonantal onsets such as /spr-, spl-, str-, skr-/ as an aberrant phonological phenomenon. If /s-/ is out of the picture, the remaining portion of the onset is well-formed in terms of Son-Seq, nothing further needs to be said about these clusters. The analysis presented here interprets Son-Seq as only one of the factors determining the composition and behavior of onset clusters. The question arises whether this different approach can deal equally well with tripartite clusters. The answer is positive. The extraordinary cohesiveness of /sp-, st-, sk-/ allows them to behave phonologically like units. If the first perceptual burst falls to the right of the cluster, the transition between the /-p-, -t-, -k-/ and a following sonorant is of the same order as the transition between any singleton obstruent followed by a sonorant. Structurally, in the perceptually based account proposed here, /sp-, st-, sk-/ + sonorant onset string is similar to /s-/ + sonorant string. This similarity finds a strong diachronic confirmation in the well-documented process of <-c-> or <-k-> insertion in /sl-/ onsets. The following examples of alternating spellings of <sl>, <scl>, or <skl> in Middle English support that hypothesis:95 (27)

OE <sl> slacian slæc slant slaught slenten97 slideren ‘slide’ sleahe99

ME <skl, scl> sclake96 sclac sklant sclauth sklent sklither sclai-

OE <sl> sleep sleeve slay slidor ‘slick’ slætan ‘dash’ (ofer)slop slugginge

ME <skl, scl> sclepen scleue, skleves scle sklither skletten (ouer)sclope98 sclugging100

95. Many of these examples are cited in Harris (1954: 78–79). Luick (1914/1940: 860–861) describes this epenthesis of stops as “eine Erscheinung . . . deren Eigenart nicht ganz sicher zu erfassen ist” [a phenomenon whose peculiarity cannot be grasped with certainty]. He cites a number of “intrusive” spellings that go all the way back to Old English: sclat, scleacnes, sclidd, sclep. If in all cases <sc-> stood for /ʃ/ there would be very little to explain beyond the acoustic similarity between /s-/ and /ʃ/. The possibility that this phenomenon may have had something to do with the similarity and therefore possible confusion between /sk’/, /s-/, and /ʃ/ is not considered here because of the bidirectionality of the process. A “real” epenthetic account may be connected to the parallel post fourteenth-century development of a new cluster /skw/ in the language. 96. A relatively frequent spelling, found from the time of Poema Morale a. 1250 to the York Plays (c. 1450). 97. From ∗ slenta, ON ∗ slantjan, Norw. dial. slenta ‘to slope’, older Dan. slente ‘to slide, slip’ (MED). 98. ‘Cassock, overgarment’ (MED). 99. ‘A part of a loom, consisting of wires or strips of reed, wood, etc., set in a frame, used for forcibly compressing the weft, a weaver’s reed’ (MED). 100. ‘lazy, sluggish, characterized by sloth’, from ON (?) (MED).

232

5 Onset and cluster alliteration in OE

The list is not complete. In searching the MED, one finds numerous headwords and forms in which <sl-> alternates with <scl-/skl->. Among them are common words such as slab <sclabbe>, slade <sclade>, slayer <scleer, sclaer>, sleyer ‘a veil’ <skleir(e), sklere, sklaire, s(c)leire, s(c)laire>, sling <scling, sclang, sclong>, sloe <sclach>, sloth <sclouthe>, sluttish <scluttish>, slumbering <sclumbringe>, etc.101 Note that the alternation of <sc-> and <sk-> spellings, as well as the other evidence from epenthesis, deletion and metathesis occurring in the same sequence argues against the possibility of interpreting the similarity as based on /s/ spelled <s-> and /ʃ/ spelled <sc->. The opposite development, the omission of the stop before the sonorant in the same sequences also points to the similarity between /s/ + /l/ and /sk-/ + /l/. (28) lists some examples in which the velar stop has been dropped from French borrowings in which the etymological sequence /skl-/ ends up as /sl-/ in English: (28)

French /-skl-/ esclaundre esclat esclate103 sclaue c. 1290

ME /sl-/ slander slat slate slave

French /-skl-/ esclendre esclice escluse

ME /sl-/ slender102 slice sluice

In fact, the OED lists the spelling <scl-> as a Middle English and Scots variant of <sl->. Although the loss of the initial <e-> in the French borrowings occurred quite early, /skl-/ forms of all these words persisted well into the seventeenth century. Obviously, there was a long period in the language when /skl-/ and /sl-/ forms for the same lexical item were in free variation. Luick (1914/1940: 860) identifies the fifteenth century as the time when this variation peaked. While the “appendix” account takes /s-/ out of the picture and aligns the remaining part of the cluster with the common pattern, it would not be very helpful in explaining why this kind of variation can arise in the first place. Indeed, assuming that /s-/ is extrametrical makes the deletion or insertion of a stop before /-l-/ completely unmotivated. An account based on the perceived similarity between the two forms /skl-/ < – > /sl-/ makes it clear why the epenthetic 101. One interesting development is the change from ML sclarea & OE slaria to clary ‘a garden herb,’ spelled sclari, slaream in ME (MED). 102. OED forms: 4–6 slendre, 5- slender, 4, 6 sclendre, 5–7 sclender; 5 sklendire, 5–6 -re, 6 -ir, -ur, 5–6, 9 dial., sklender; 6 scl-, sklinder. 103. Anglo-Latin sclata, sklata from the fourteenth century.

5.6 /sp-, st-, sk-/ and the French vocabulary

233

or deletable consonant is a voiceless stop, and not just any consonant.104 It is only a voiceless stop that can be fitted in the pre-sonorant position without impinging dramatically on the overall perceptual structure of the onset. While the most common examples involve the /sl-/ <–> /skl-/ alternation, the same type of perceptual similarity is involved in alternations with the other voiceless stops in that position too, for example <stlidornis> for ‘slidderness’ (MED) and the following <spl-> spellings for <sp->105 (29)

ME headword sparpling ‘dispersing’ spelter ‘alloy’ spite ‘spit, rod’ spilde ‘spilled,’ p.t.

ME spelling splarpynge spleter splittes (pl.) splite

Some of these may be instances of metathesis: spel- in ‘alloy’ becoming sple-, spil- in ‘spilled’ becoming spli-. Inversely, the sequence /spl/ + vowel may be split by switching the position of the approximant and the vowel: ME sple(ndoure) ‘splendor’ appears as <spel-dor>, splaien ‘unfurl’ appears as <spal> in surnames (MED). Evidence of a somewhat different nature, but still germane to the point are the nineteenth-century alternating pairs splosh–slosh, splutter–sputter.

5.6

/sp-, st-, sk-/ and the French vocabulary

This section is a brief survey of the fate of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in Anglo-Norman and Old French borrowings. Vowel prosthesis, also referred to as epenthesis, to the left of word-initial groups of s+consonant goes back to the second century AD. In Old French the phonetics of these clusters remained stable initially and the prosthetic vowel /e/ which was already appearing in Late Latin, became a fixed feature in front of such clusters since the twelfth century (Pope 1934: 145, 217).106 In both varieties of French a prosthetic <e-> was regularly inserted in words containing the initial clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/:

104. I am using the double arrow < – > to indicate that two entities are in a similarity relationship to each other. 105. The MED marks these as “errors.” This does not invalidate the point that they make – errors are good evidence for what the mental lexicon of a speaker or a scribe allows. 106. The loss of /s/ in preconsonantal position in French did not occur fully until after the end of the fourteenth century, see Pope (1934: 206, 264). It resulted in compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.

234 (30)

5 Onset and cluster alliteration in OE ME

OF

ME

OF

ME

OF

space spaniel spoil spleen

espace espaigneul espoille esplien

stable stage stale statute

estable estage estale estatute-

scale squash squat scourge

escale ‘of fish’ esquasser esquater escorge

In Old English, roots beginning with the sequences /Vsk-/, /Vsp-/, /Vst-/ always had stress on the initial vowel. Prefixed derivatives such as aspend (last attested c. 1175) asteal (last attested c. 1325) are rare; they could not have produced the phonotactic model for V + /sp-, st-, sk-/ where the stem vowel is unstressed. It is not surprising therefore that the borrowing of Romance words with initial <est-, esp-, esc-> should have undergone rapid assimilation resulting in abandonment of the initial vowel. This alignment with the native phonotactics must have started very early. Among the words borrowed in the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries we find stable (1264), sclaue ‘slave’ (1290), statute (1290), followed by stage (1300), spleen (1300), spoil (1325), space (1325), scale (1330), etc. In fact, the bulk of the attestations in Middle English ignore the prosthetic vowel. It is only towards the end of the fourteenth century that prosthetic forms begin to appear. The MED records one single form each of espace, espolen, both in very unEnglish contexts. What this means is that in the earlier part of Middle English the strength of the native model for these clusters was sufficient to override the “foreignness” of the borrowings. These words quickly became part of the core vocabulary of English. Historically in Romance, the development of the prosthetic vowel is a different type of diagnostic of the cohesiveness of /sp-, st-, sk-/.107 Later loanwords tend to retain the foreign phonotactics along with a meaning that is often associated with a different, usually higher register. The examples in (31) illustrate this point; the parenthesized dates are the first attestations of these words in the OED: (31)

scale v. (1380) spirit (1250)108 spouse v. (1290) squire (1290) strange (1297)

escale (1579) esprit (1591) espouse (1475) esquire (1475) estrange v. (1485)

For some of the synchronic variables, spy–espy, state–estate, the semantic differentiation occurred later. The preservation of the /s/ in the English forms of these words is partly due to the re-introduction of the consonant in 107. See Broselow (1992), Fleischhacker (2000), who discuss the asymmetry between prosthesis for sibilant fricative + stop clusters and anaptyxis for obstruent + sonorant clusters. 108. See also sprite (1300).

5.7 Summary and conclusions

235

French in the sixteenth century, partly to the direct influence of Latin.109 The modern language accommodates both phonotactic models: special–especial, squadron–esquadron (obs.), state–estate, stew–estew (obs.), strange – estrange. For Middle English, however, the pattern of stem-initial /sp-, st-, sk-/ remained dominant.

5.7

Summary and conclusions

The goal of this chapter was to isolate the set of features whose co-occurrence makes the existence, frequency, and stability of /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters phonologically likely. Another aim was to relate the perceptual factors that define the special cohesive effect of these clusters to the alliterative behavior of these onsets in Germanic and Old English. The acoustic unity of /sp-, st-, sk-/ does not occur in spite of the violation of the universal constraint on rising sonority, the approach taken in earlier accounts, but because this constraint is weak in relation to other factors. The clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/ obey co-occurrence constraints on continuancy and voicing which non-cohesive clusters are free to violate. In this sense, the interpretation of cohesiveness involves a concatenation of mutually dependent filters. As in the previous chapters, the starting-point for the account was the behavior of the clusters in alliteration, and again the parametrical rules of alliteration proved a valuable source of philological information. In every instance the reconstructions based on alliteration in those instances were also supported by other internal linguistic or external data. The situation with /sp-, st-, sk-/ is peculiar in that except for the alliterative evidence, by definition restricted to the privileged position in stressed onsets, there are no other tests that can yield information about the cohesiveness of these clusters in the older language. On the other hand, the cohesiveness of sibilant–obstruent clusters in other languages has been amply documented (Fleischhacker 2001). The special property of these clusters is realized provably only in the onset of stressed syllables. A testable parallel for this situation exists in the modern language: full cluster copying is freely deployed in meta-linguistic rules such as reduplication, alliteration, and, of course, spoonerisms.110 109. Pope (1934: 152) notes the uncertainty in the pronunciation of preconsonantal <s> in French between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. She attributes this to the orthographical tradition, analogical influences, provincial variation, etc. 110. The reduplication data of Modern English conform to the cohesiveness of /sp-, st-, sk-/, but they do not separate these clusters from the rest of the onsets. All Ablaut reduplicative words in English (for example crick-crack, spitter-spatter, flip-flop, splitter-splatter, strim-stram, squish-squash) respect the identity of the onset fully.

236

5 Onset and cluster alliteration in OE

Compare the Old English original to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf 926: (32)

st¯od on stapole, / geseah st¯eapne hr¯of ‘standing on the steps, under the steep eaves’

Beowulf 926 Heaney (2000)

The factors isolated as significant in the behavior of the /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters show that the Germanic and Old English alliterative practice was well motivated and typologically predictable. From the point of view of the entire history of the language, the dividing line between /sp-, st-, sk-/ and the other onset clusters remains position-specific and period-specific. Cluster alliteration of s + stop clusters became inconsistent in early Middle English; at the same time, other initial clusters began to alliterate as units. The perceptual break which we interpret as crucial for the way onsets were treated in Old English was ignored by some post-Conquest poets and scribes. Thus, in addition to the linguistic justification provided by the missing perceptual break in /sp-, st-, sk-/ in the language, the Old English scops must have observed unit alliteration unfailingly because they were trained in a tradition in which a unique linguistic property had been elevated to the status of an artificial convention. The exact source of this convention remains unclear, but as suggested in 5.1, it may have had something to do with the prestige of the Anglo-Latin compositions by Aldhelm. Diminishing loyalty to the classical form of versification towards the end of the OE period allowed this detail of the traditional ars poetica to go by the board. Starting with Ælfric (c. 955–c. 1010), whose innovative blend of poetry and prose was much copied and influential, the s+ stop clusters were no longer special, and poets and scribes could treat /sp-, st-, sk-/ on a par with other “good” clusters. This historical progression suggests an interesting correlation between the linguistic and the literary component of alliterative verse. Neither pervasive native tradition, nor the prestigious offspring of that tradition, Anglo-Latin verse, or the mixture of the two, would have been likely to succeed in the absence of the right linguistic conditions. The Germanic and the Old English traditions rest on a linguistically sound principle, so sound indeed that it could influence versification in Latin and in turn be influenced by it. However, as the classical tradition grew more and more fossilized towards the end of the tenth century, alliteration may have been re-interpreted. Apart from relying on identity of the material up to the first perceptual break, the matching Heaney matches clusters too: (slack–asleep, sleep–slopped, Grendel–gruesome, Grendel– grim, triumph–truth), but I have found no other matching of the OE alliterative pattern so perfect as in line 926.

5.7 Summary and conclusions

237

was extended to as much of the material to the right as possible. This would be in line with the increased identity of the vowels in vowel alliteration discussed in 4.3.1 and the spread of cluster alliteration to other onsets in Middle English. Thus, the gradual relaxation of cluster alliteration specifically on /sp-, st-, sk-/ became one of the symptoms of the demise of the classical Anglo-Saxon model. The discussion of /sp-, st-, sk-/ unit alliteration in Old English leads to some interesting questions concerning the fate of cluster alliteration in Middle English and the fate of onset clusters in general. The former will be the theme of chapter 6. In addition to defining the properties of /sp-, st-, sk-/, the exposition in this chapter identified constraints that together may help us define the limits within which other initial clusters in English are historically well-formed. Seen from that perspective, Table 5.1 separates the surviving from the non-surviving initial clusters in English; the latter will be addressed in chapter 7.

6

Onset and cluster alliteration in Middle English

Turning to the practices of the Middle English alliterative poets with regard to onset clusters, we will continue to rely on the assumption that the selection of items to fit particular verse patterns is done with considerable discrimination. Verse composition draws on the available phonological material in the language; therefore the poetic choices provide an evidential basis for the reconstruction of features in the contemporary language, and a good testing ground for linguistic claims that are not period- or even language-specific. This chapter will look into the distribution of cluster alliteration in Middle English. The goal of this particular portion of the study is to establish the correlation between the composition of the onsets and their cohesive behavior in verse. Assuming that the phonetic and phonological determinants remained relatively constant, and that cluster alliteration is a good diagnostic of similarity, it will be interesting to see how well-formed clusters other than /sp-, st-, sk-/ are deployed in verse. It is often recognized, and most cogently argued by Fulk (1992: 266–268, 286–287), that some aspects of Old English verse had become highly artificial by the time of the Norman Conquest. Whether linguistically or culturally induced, the distancing between the early and the late verse is apparent in the collapse of the classical rules of verse organization, in the reduced use of poetic compounds, and even in the changing conventions of what constitutes acceptable alliteration. The so-called “transitional” poetic material, which builds on models such as Ælfric’s rhythmical prose, adheres only to a subset of the rules of classical verse. Notably absent are Sievers’ D and E Type verses involving stress clashes and secondary stress.1 Nevertheless, the poetic effect of the post-Conquest compositions continues to rest largely on alliteration and the four-beat line, although both are interpreted much more loosely. Alliteration 1. On these issues, see Cable (1991: 41–65). He provides a detailed summary of previous research in this area and an enlightening comparison between the rhythmic profiles in Ælfric’s rhythmical prose and the Old English patterns.

238

6.1 New patterns of alliteration in ME

239

remains a central structural component of the “revival” poems of the second half of the fourteenth century too. One alliterative feature that supposedly distinguishes Old from Middle English alliterative compositions is cluster alliteration, or zusammengesetzte St¨abe: the extension of the self-alliteration pattern from /sp-, st-, sk-/ to other clusters. Put differently, unlike their Old English predecessors, the Middle English poets allowed themselves considerably more latitude in judging the scope and limits of onset similarity and identity. The rules of alliteration were restructured: not only the leftmost edge of the onset, but the entire onset was eligible for alliteration. The /sp-, st-, sk-/ cluster alliteration provided the model for that restructuring. This chapter will examine the rate at which different clusters participated in alliteration as units. The hypothesis that the investigation will test is that not all well-formed initial clusters are equally cohesive and that the selection of matching pairs depends on the composition of the cluster; this, in turn, is revealing in terms of the cluster’s linguistic properties. The chapter starts out with a brief summary of the alliterative innovations in Middle English, followed by a chronological survey of the evidence found in Middle English verse. The data are then analyzed in the context of more general phonological claims concerning the composition and hierarchical cohesion of consonant clusters. More specifically, the findings are used to test the status and the violability of the Contiguity constraint. The final section of the chapter addresses the interplay between phonological factors, lexical frequency of occurrence, and alliterative rank in the selection of self-alliterating clusters. Only clusters that have maintained their segmental composition will be examined in this chapter. Historically unstable clusters will be treated separately in chapter 7.

6.1

New patterns of alliteration in Middle English

Descriptions of Middle English alliteration invariably mention that the “pure” patterns of Old English were extended in some specific ways (Kaluza 1911: 203–205, Schumacher 1914: 1–3, Oakden 1930/1968: 158–163). The points of interest in which classical Old English alliteration differs from Middle English alliteration are: a b c d

Strong tendency to alliterate on identical vowels Stab der Liaison Cluster onsets alliterate as groups (zusammengesetzte St¨abe) The clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/ alliterate on /s-/

240

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME e Dialectal borrowing in alliteration: /f-/:/v-/, /w-/:/v-/ f /s-/:/ʃ-/ alliteration g Vowel : /h-/ alliteration

Additional delimitative linguistic and metrical properties which will not be addressed in this study are the avoidance of enjambment, i.e. the syntactic unity of the line, the increased incidence of alliteration in the b-verse, and the tendency for consecutive lines to share the same alliteration. Oakden (1930/1968: 157) uses the latter as an argument for the continuity of the tradition. Oakden’s insistence on “continuity” has been countered by Cable (1991). The position taken here is that some continuity must be assumed, in the limited sense that matching the onsets of stressed syllables continues to organize the line, and that the number of alliterating peaks to the left continues to exceed the number of peaks to the right. However, the poems composed at the height of the alliterative “revival” are reinventions and not imitations or even “extensions” of the preConquest modes of versification. The innovative features of Middle English alliterative verse in (a)–(g) above are not of equal relevance to the reconstruction of the ambient language. The linguistic significance of (a) and (b) was already discussed in chapter 4. This chapter will focus on (c) and (d), two contradictory phenomena related to cluster alliteration.2 Apart from the observation that (c) and (d), group alliteration and splitting of the /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters, are non-traditional, there has been no discussion in the literature regarding the scope of these phenomena, or the possible linguistic reasons for the choice of clusters treated as units. My concrete investigation of the Middle English material will start with the first long post-Conquest composition which relies heavily on alliteration, namely Lagamon’s Brut, and proceed with the fourteenth-century material. Before that, however, a look back and a comparison between the verse practices of Old and Middle English poets with respect to the same phenomena is in order. 6.2

Cluster alliteration in Old and Middle English: a comparison

As discussed in chapter 5, in Old English the clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/ alliterated as units while all other word-initial clusters were unpacked such that the first consonant participated in the alliteration. Examples of the two patterns are shown in (1a) and (1b): 2. The phonetic motivation of the pattern in (f), /s-/ : /ʃ-/ alliteration, will be considered briefly in 6.3.1.

6.2 Cluster alliteration in OE and ME (1)

(a) Scaðan scirhame / to scipe foron3 Stopon styrnmode, / stercedferhðe4 and þæt spere sprengde, / þæt hit sprang ongean5 (b) ðurh sliþne niþ / sawle bescufan6 druncen & dolhwund. / Næs ða dead þa gyt7 þe þær baldlicost / on þa bricge stop8

241

Beo 1895 Judith 227 Maldon 137 Beo 184 Judith 107 Maldon 78

This is standard alliterative verse lore: there are no exceptions to /sp-, st-, sk-/ unit alliteration in the classical body of Anglo-Saxon verse. What is not so well known is that taking a step outside the canonical patterns, we find that even in Old English there are numerous examples of other initial clusters also behaving as units, though this kind of rhyming is not systematic. Some examples of Old English cluster alliteration are cited in (2): (2)

Swa þa drihtguman / dreamum lifdon9 forgrand gramum, / ond nu wiþ Grendel sceal10 slæpendne rinc, / slat unwearnum11 gyf ðonne Frysna hwylc / frecnan spræc12 abreot brimwisan, / bryd ahredde13 Gangaþ nu snude, / snyttro geþencaþ14 geclungne to cleowenne. / þonne clæne bið15 þurh briddes had / gebreadad weorðeð16 ond a snellice / snere wræstan17 þær com flowende / flod æfter ebban18 swiðe mid his swurde, / swenges ne wyrnde19

Beo 99 Beo 424 Beo 741 Beo 1104 Beo 2930 Elene 313 Phoenix 226 Phoenix 372 Fort 82 Maldon 65 Maldon 118

The practice has not gone entirely unnoticed. Pope (1966: 101) observed that “when a syllable begins with two or more consonants, all may alliterate (as do 3. 5. 6. 8. 10. 11. 12. 13. 15. 16.

‘Scathing foes sheer-armored / to ship fared’ 4. ‘Stepped sternly; / stout-hearted’ ‘And that spear caused to spring / so that it sprang again’ ‘through painful fear / soul shove’ 7. ‘drunken and wounded. / He was not dead yet’ ‘Who there boldly / on the bridge stepped’ 9. ‘So the lord’s men / with dreams lived’ ‘Ground down the grim ones / and now with Grendel shall.’ Other examples with /gr-/ in Beowulf are found at ll. 102, 334. ‘Sleeping warrior, / slashed unhindered’ ‘if then Frisian any / through unfriendly speech’ ‘Cut down sea-leader, / wife rescued’ 14. ‘go now quickly / with wisdom think’ ‘shrunk to a ball / then destroyed is’ ‘through birdhood / he is brought to motion’ (on the translation see Bammesberger 1986: 62–63). Another /br-/ example is found in The Battle of Maldon: þa Byrhtnoð bræd / bill of sceðe, brad and bruneccg, / and on þa byrnan sloh.

Maldon 162–3

17. ‘and always swiftly / the strings strum’ 18. ‘There came flowing / flood after the ebb’ 19. ‘mightily with the sword / the stroke did not restrain’

242

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

those beginning with sw in Maldon 118), but usually only one is required to do so.” A further search in the Old English Corpus on-line and the Concordance to the ASPR turned up an unexpectedly large number of lines with cluster alliteration both in the earlier and in the later material: /bl-/ : /bl-/ in Genesis A, B (eighth century) at ll. 1761, 2333, Guthlac 497, /kl-/ : kl-/ in Elene (ninth century) at l. 696, /sl-/ : /sl-/ in Judith 247, /sn-/ : /sn-/ in Andreas (ninth century) 267, Elene 154, 313, etc. The density of group alliteration varies from poem to poem, which is to be expected if the choice reflects the fine and gradient acoustic distinctions among the various clusters and if it correlates with the availability of appropriate vocabulary items. This is a testable proposition, although I have not collected further data from the corpus of Old English verse with this hypothesis in mind. Without conducting a complete search, among the relatively later poems I found Judith quite remarkable in this respect, with cluster identity or similarity in lines 5, 6, 12, 17, 19, 23, 29, 30, 33, 37, 39, 43, etc. In Maldon interesting cluster alliteration or near identity (see below) appears in lines 9, 12, 17, 39, 41, 62, 72, 78, 92, 100, 106, 109, 115, 118, 131, 140, 144, 150, etc. The ratio of cluster alliteration in these late poems is thus quite high: in Maldon 18 out of the first 150 lines and in Judith 12 out of the first 50 lines are of that type. So, cluster alliteration is definitely attested in the Old English poetic records, yet it has never received serious scholarly attention. Even scholars who are aware of the possibility of matching more than the left edge of a cluster do not treat this feature as significant beyond the merely descriptive remarks made in passing relating it to the discontinuity of the poetic tradition. Oakden (1930/1968: 163–165) does not mention the possibility of cluster alliteration in Old English outside the obligatory /st-, sp-, sk-/ pairing. Schumacher (1914: 40–45), whose remarkable philological spadework provides the most extensive coverage of cluster alliteration in the literature, and the basis of much of Oakden’s observations on this issue, refers to Old English cluster alliteration as “an exception.” Kaluza (1911: 122) mentions the possibility of consonant clusters alliterating with each other “in later poems,” and cites some examples from Judith. Yet, as shown in (2), the appearance of such patterns is by no means chronologically restricted to the later monuments in the poetic corpus. In his outstanding coverage of the late developments in Old English verse Fulk (1992: ch. 10) uses the criterion of /st-, sp-, sk-/ unity as a possible diagnostic, but he generally ignores other instances of cluster alliteration.20 20. One instance in which Fulk discusses self-alliteration of /sl-/ and /sw-/ as one of the many possible features pointing to a late date is in his discussion of the composition of Judgement

6.2 Cluster alliteration in OE and ME

243

Old English cluster alliteration, as illustrated in (2), has not been studied, presumably because it is seen as nothing more than accidental, excessive ornamentation which contributes nothing to the structural or stylistic coherence of a poetic piece. Naturally, even the occasional occurrences of group alliteration in the Old English poetic corpus could reflect the degree of cohesion of particular clusters. Still, although the practice was not unfamiliar to the Old English scops, these examples are comparatively rare and do not strike the reader as attestations of quite the same deliberate focus on identity that they appear to have become later. Therefore a more systematic search of the data and a link to a hierarchy of phonologically-based preferences is more appropriate for the Middle English material. Before we look into the consonantal data, we must note the parallel between vowel alliteration and cluster alliteration in the two periods. Chapter 4 argued that Old English vowel alliteration was based on the presence of an epenthetic glottal stop, i.e. it required identity of the material to the left of the first perceptual break in the stressed syllable. This is also true of cluster alliteration, no matter whether the break came between the right edge of the onset and the peak, as in /sp-, st-, sk-/, or within the onset. Any further identity of the stressed syllables in Old English was a structurally redundant enrichment, explicitly frowned upon in the case of alliteration on identical vowels. There is no record of a parallel negative esthetic judgement regarding cluster onset identity, but it was clearly not a feature that was actively sought. In contrast, alliteration on identical vowels and alliteration on entire clusters became specially favored by the Middle English poets. While identity up to the first perceptual break remained a necessary condition for acceptable alliteration shared by both traditions, extending the domain to include everything up to the syllable peak, and the syllable peak itself, became a desirable stratagem for the poets of the “revival” period. By examining more closely the zusammengesetzte St¨abe of Middle English, I will show that the Old English examples in (2) foreshadow the development of an alliterative conceit that flourished in Middle English. In both periods the practice can be taken as an indicator of the history and nature of cluster cohesion and cluster similarity in English. The lines cited in (3) illustrate broadly the extended use of group alliteration in fourteenth-century alliterative texts: Day II (1992: 262–263). Cluster alliteration is not used elsewhere as an attribute whose presence could be relevant to the dating of Old English verse. The matter is, of course, determined not by changes in the ambient language but rather by a new interpretation of the parametrical rules of verse composition. In that sense it could be useful, though only indirect, evidence for dating.

244 (3)

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME With brases of broun stele / brauden full thikke With [sy]de21 slabbande sleues / sleght to þe grounde Til Sleuthe and sleep sliken hise sydes Ther smyt no thyng so smerte, ne smelleth so foule That were bisnewed with snow, and snakes withinne, Brayden vp brigges with brouden chaynes There the gryse was grene, growen with floures, And the precyous prayere of Hys prys Modyr And when his dredefull drem whas drefen to þe ende,

W & W 113 W & W 411 PPl 2.09922 PPl 11.434 PPl 15.112 Siege 615 Parl. 3 Ages 8 MA 1–2 MA 322423

The inverse tendency, the occasional splitting of the clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/ to allow them to alliterate on /s-/ is not new either; it goes back to the so-called “transitional” poetic material, which builds on models such as Ælfric’s rhythmical prose and adheres only to a subset of the rules of classical verse. Unpacking of /sp-, st-, sk-/, usually associated with general laxity of metrical form, occurs already in The Soul’s Address to the Body (Moffat 1987: 54) and Lagamon’s Brut. The examples in (4) are from MS Cotton Caligula A ix:24 (4)

A steores-man ham talde wil-spel; þat he Spaine isæih. Heo speken þer to sæhte; to sibbe and to some. & smat on Herigales sceld. þat his stæf atwaie wond

LB 677 LB 2045 LB 4204

Whether the fourth lift in the examples in (4) is interpreted as alliterating or not is irrelevant to the point.25 Splitting of /sp-, st-, sk/ occurs also in many fourteenth-century compositions as in (5):

21. MS has elde. The emendation to sleghe ‘skillfully made’ proposed by Turville-Petre is rejected by Trigg (1990: 42) on semantic grounds. 22. All citations from Piers Plowman are based on the online version of the B-text included in the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. The text used is The Vision of Piers Plowman, edited by A. V. C. Schmidt, a critical edition of the B-text based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17 with selected variant readings, London and New York: J. M. Dent and E. P. Dutton, 1978. The electronic edition in HTML was made available through the Oxford Text Archive, distributed by the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative. 23. The citations are from the text included in the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse: The Alliterative Morte Arthure, A critical edition, edited, with an introduction, notes, and glossary by Valerie Krishna, New York: Burt Franklin, 1976. 24. Text: c. 1250, Early English Text Society 250, 277. For my search I have used the electronic edition of the text available on http://www.hti.umich.edu/english/mideng/ . 25. The /s-/ in isæih (l. 677) and some (l. 2045) is boldfaced here on the assumption that the second lift in the b-verse in the alliterating portions of Brut can be a legitimate alliterating position. Of the 1,170 lines linked by alliteration in Oakden’s count of the patterns in the poem (1935 [1968]: 142–144), 41 lines have the pattern aa/aa. In addition, there are 660 lines in which the fourth lift participates in the alliteration, for example xa/xa, ax/xa, aa/xa, etc.

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut (5)

þi skathill sectours / schal seuer þam aboute Thanne Symonye and Cyvylle stonden forth bothe So that he sewe and save Spiritus Temperancie. And a[s] smartli as þei couþe, þe skinnes of turned þat þe stede him ofsaw, sone he up leped þe king of Spayne stifli stert up sone

245

W & W 443 PP 2.072 PP 20.22 W Pal 259026 W Pal 3283 W Pal 4355

The splitting of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in the fourteenth-century compositions is admittedly rare. The Old English convention is observed strictly in many texts, for example Alexander A and B, The Parlement of Thre Ages, The Siege of Jerusalem, The Wars of Alexander. These are also the texts that show high incidence of group alliteration. The correlation suggests that in addition to the phonological propensity of clusters to behave cohesively or non-cohesively, individual poets interpreted differently the notion of what constitutes a good alliterative unit. Again, before moving on to the presentation of the Middle English material in detail, it should be noted that Old and Middle English compositions display the same types of alliteration, only they do so to a different degree. Many ME poets explicitly favor cluster alliteration, while matching /sp-, st-, sk-/ as units is not an obligatory property of the alliterating syllables. This particular relaxation of the Old English parametrical rules is facilitated by the fact that while /sp-, st-, sk-/ remain cohesive, they are also bisegmental. For all clusters, group alliteration is optional; minimally, a well-formed line requires identity of the leftmost segment of the stressed syllables, i.e. the first consonant of any cluster in the appropriate lift positions. 6.3

Cluster alliteration in early Middle English: Lagamon’s Brut

The more frequent incidence of Zusammengesetzte St¨abe in Middle English was noticed in the nineteenth century, and in 1914 Karl Schumacher cataloged some of the instantiations in a large corpus of fourteenth- to sixteenth-century texts. He remarked briefly (1914: 44) that poets who observe the pattern of three alliterating lifts per long line use group alliteration most frequently, citing Wynner and Waster, The Parlement of Thre Ages, Alexander A and B, Gawain, Cleanness, Patience, The Siege of Jerusalem, Death and Life as examples. Oakden (1930/1968: ch. 8), the only other survey of such alliterative practices, 26. Text from Bunt edition (1985). Composition c. 1360–1375, West Midlands (Gloucestershire). Length: 5,540 (long) lines. Over 80 percent of the lines in the text – 78.1 percent according to Oakden (1930/1968: 184 ff.), but the percentage is higher if one counts the appropriate emendations suggested by Bunt (1985: 82–83) – follow the alliterative pattern aa/ax.

246

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

relies entirely on Schumacher on this point. Both studies leave the impression that the choices are unregulated and that all initial clusters stand the same chance of rhyming as units. As noted, the research history on English alliterative versification, observations regarding unit alliteration and the splitting of /sp-, st-, sk-/ have been used to argue for or against the continuity of the Old English tradition. It is possible to work this practice into the description of the poets’ style, diction, and metrical consistency. Regarding the use of zusammengesetzte St¨abe as a stylistic issue alone, however, would lose sight of its linguistic underpinnings. It is important therefore to establish the scope and the possible linguistic reasons for the choice of clusters treated as units. The next sections of this chapter will address these two issues in greater detail, starting with a survey of the alliterative practice in Lagamon’s Brut. 6.3.1 /s-/ + stop clusters in Lagamon’s Brut The composition of Lagamon’s Brut is dated 1189–1207; the dialect is that of North Worcestershire (Oakden 1930/1968: 142–143). The absence of foursyllable half-lines in the poem is an important test of its “discontinuity” with regard to the patterns found in classical Old English meter.27 On the other hand, all but one of the eleven most frequent patterns found in the poem – and that particular pattern is at the bottom of the frequency scale – have two lifts per half-line. The occurrence of two lifts per half-line can therefore be taken as the norm. In spite of the mixing of metrical forms in the poem, more than threequarters of the lines are linked by alliteration.28 This is a sufficiently reliable basis for testing the alliteration patterns. Not surprisingly for a text whose structural properties are often associated with the late Old English alliterative rhythmical prose, in Lagamon’s Brut the /st-, sp-, sk-/ cluster alliteration of the classical Old English period was a desirable, but no longer inviolable, verse feature. Another non-traditional aspect of the alliteration in the text is the frequent unit alliteration of initial consonant clusters.29 27. This comparison is drawn from the interesting discussion of the metrical structure of Lagamon’s Brut in Cable (1991: 58–63). 28. The distribution of alliterating lines is uneven throughout the work. In the first 12,000 verses alliteration as the structural binding principle prevails, in lines 12000–14000 the picture changes in favor of end-rhyme. In lines 20000–22000 alliteration is more pronounced, but less significantly so, etc. These observations are based on Brandst¨adter (1912: 26). 29. The examples cited here are selected from the older of the two extant manuscripts, MS Cotton Caligula A ix, c. 1250, Early English Text Society 250, 277. For my search I have used the

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut

247

The picture is mixed and the patterns warrant a more detailed description. The first observation is that the majority of the relevant alliterations follow the Old English model with respect to onset matching: (6)

þa he alles spac; mid þræte he spilede. mid stocken & mid stanen; stal-fiht heo makeden. Heo scuten heora sconken; ða scalkas weoren stronge. stockes & stanes; & strales hate. mid stocken scriðen30 under. bordes. & skirmden mid mæine; stercliche to-stopen; mid steles egge. he stræhte scaft stærcne; stiðimoden king. sceldes gonnen scanen; scaftes to-breken.

246 315 940 2840 4193 4887 10593 14249

It should be noted that some alliterating word pairs, such as spac-spelede/spilede ‘spoke-said,’ stark-strong, stockes-stanes ‘stocks-stones,’ have a highly formulaic character.31 “Pure” cluster alliteration of the type shown in (6) is not absolutely consistent in the text, however. The first deviant alliterative pairing is that between <s-> and <sc->. (7)

for his ahne sune seoþen; hine sceat to deaþe. & þu swiðe hiendliche; scild þe wið dæðe. & greiðede his scipen gode; bi þan sæ-flode. Aen ich wulle to Scotte; to scone mire docter. Mid muchele Scot-ferde; he scrað to þisse londe. Bruttes & Scottes; & moni scone. ðein

129 538 542 1714 2050 2556

These data are very much like the data for late Old English presented in the previous chapter. The uncertainty of the dating of the monophonemicization of /sk/ to /ʃ/ has already been discussed (see 5.2); for this text in particular we may consider three analytical options. The first one is that the breakdown of <sc-/ sk-> cluster alliteration is evidence that the development of the earlier electronic edition of the text available at http://www.hti.umich.edu/english/mideng/ . I have compared the electronic version to the printed version of Brook and Leslie’s 1963–1978 EETS editions (Vols. I, II). The printed version is off by one line for citation in the second volume (lines 2998 to the end) because the printed line 2997a [herden ∂e men of Rome of Belinnes dea∂e] ∗ appears as line 2998 in the electronic text. Thus printed line 3000 corresponds to e-line 3001, 4500 to 4501, etc. 30. The spelling difference between <sc-> and <sk-> is irrelevant: OE scr¯ıdan = ON skriða ‘glide, escape,’ pret. scr¯ad. This is the only instance of /sk-/ : /sk-/ alliteration in the poem. 31. Alliterating binomials are also common outside the verse corpus, compare bothe stock and ston ‘everything,’ sweren bi stokkes and bi stones ‘to swear by idols,’ stok or ston ‘something lifeless, motionless, silent, etc.; also as a term of abuse’ (MED). The availability of such formulaic collocations makes it easier for the poet to observe the pattern of unit alliteration. Examples of ready-made formulaic alliteration are found at lines 96, 433, 1905, 2021, 2911, 7038, 11817, etc.

248

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

/sk-/ cluster to /ʃ-/ in native words had already advanced sufficiently to allow alliteration based on the strong acoustic similarity of /s/ and /ʃ/. The second interpretation is that the understanding of the rules of cluster cohesion had changed sufficiently to allow “unpacking” of the /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters, in which case the material in (7) tells us nothing about the exact phonetic nature of the <sc-> sequence. In this second interpretation, the alliteration may have been either on two allophones of /s-/, or on /s/ : /ʃ-/. A third option, considering the subsequent history of some of the alliterating items, is that the alliteration in the last three examples in (7), in lines 1714, 2050, 2556, was on two /s-/ initial clusters, phonemically /sk-/, but allophonically [s⊥ k’] for Scott(es) alliterating with [s¸c] or [s⊥ c¸ ] in non-borrowed items.32 In that view, the <sc-> words alliterated optionally either as clusters, in those lines where they were matched to unequivocal biphonemic /sk-/, or, elsewhere, the alliteration was on some allophonic realization of /s-/. Schematically, the options are: (8)

Spelling

<sc-> (OE words): :<sc-> (borrowed)

Alliteration /s/ : /ʃ/ /s/ : /s/  [s k’] : [sç]

Spelling <sc-> (OE words) : <s->

All interpretations have merit. The acoustically-motivated hypothesis, the top row in the Alliteration column in (8), is plausible on the basis of the similarity between /ʃ/ and /s/ which have high levels of noisiness, a phonetic fact which underlies the assignment of the [+strident] feature to them which they share only with one other fricative in the system, /f/.“Strident sounds are marked acoustically by greater noisiness than their non-strident counterparts” (Ladefoged 1982: 184, 251).33 Apparently, for the purposes of alliteration, similarity of noisiness can be of consequence for the identification of similarity. The use of noise frequency for sibilant matching provides a phonetic basis for positing intentional alliteration of /s-/ : /ʃ/ in some of the later poems, for example 32. The alliteration on stable /sk-/ in Scott(es) in lines 1714, 2050, and 2556 with <sc-> also allows the same two interpretations, though it reinforces slightly the possibility of /sk-/ : /s¸c/ identification. Unfortunately, the only other stable /sk-/ initial word in the text, scare/scarn ‘scorn, contempt,’ is not used in an alliterating position anywhere in the poem. 33. Since /f/ and /s, ʃ/ are never paired together in alliteration, this would mean that the stridency they share is less salient for the perception of similarity than the difference in coronality; /f/ is a non-coronal, while /s, ʃ/ are coronal. Guion (1996: 64) reports the results of a study according to which “the important cues for the fricatives /s/ and /ʃ/ are given by the noise, but the differentiation of /f/ and /␪/ is accomplished primarily on the basis of cues contained in the vocalic part of the syllable.” The inference is that “the frication of /s/ and /ʃ/ provide the necessary and sufficient cues for their identification, and override whatever cues may be provided by the vocalic portions.”

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut

249

William of Palerne, Piers Plowman, Richard the Redeles, pace Schumacher (1914: 213), who refers to this type of alliteration as fraglich ‘questionable.’ This similarity, possibly reinforced by the graphic identity of the two sounds, is presumably what accounts for the tradition of considering /s-/ : /ʃ-/ alliteration a feature distinguishing Old from Middle English verse, see above, 6.1.34 The splitting of a bisegmental /sk-/, in whatever realization of the second consonant in the onset, the second interpretation in the middle column of (8), is plausible on the analogy of the optionality of cluster alliteration with other clusters. The third row refers to instances where the choice might go in favor of “unit” alliteration [s⊥ k’]:[s¸c] which presupposes continuing compositionality of <sc-> in native words. This is the least likely option, but it cannot be ruled out altogether. Finally, since the text exists in two versions, it should be noted that the discussion here would not apply automatically to the later and more northern version of the Otho manuscript. In that text the <sc-> of the Caligula version is regularly replaced by <s->.35 While by definition the later copyist would want to observe the alliterative pattern, the alliteration between graphically fully identical entities as in: for his owene ʃone/hine ʃet to deþe (Otho 129) increases the likelihood of /s/ : /ʃ/ matching. The issue that cannot be determined without further research is the following: since a bisegmental /sk-/ is perceived as cohesive, would the similarity between two singletons /s/ : /ʃ/ be a better basis for alliteration than the “unnatural” splitting of /sk-/ and the matching of its first consonant with a singleton elsewhere? It would be an empirically testable question whether, for example Modern English sip is perceived as more similar to ship than it is to skip.36 Experimental data might help us determine which of the interpretations of the alliterative observations is more likely. Again, it is possible that a non-linguistic factor, namely 34. In contrast to sibilants, other fricatives are identified on the basis of formant transitions, and not the noise portion. Interpreting alliteration as correspondence of stressed onsets up to the transition point would account for the absence of /f/ : /␪/ alliteration. It should be pointed out, however, that in view of the frequent confusability of /f/ : /␪/ in Modern English, the issue of why Middle English poets and scribes never mix these two voiceless fricatives in alliteration cannot be considered closed. I think that this is one case where spelling should be considered; it argues in favor of the ‘littera’ component of the alliteration of <sc-> words. 35. See Madden (1847/1970, I: xxxi) who cites spellings such as same ‘shame,’ set ‘shot,’ sip ‘ship,’ sop’shop,’ as evidence for the Anglian or Northumbrian origin of the later transcription of the text. 36. Such questions are addressed in current research by Donca Steriade and her students; they have already accumulated an impressive body of evidence that similarity judgements are a good source of information regarding the phonological properties of segments.

250

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

spelling, is a contributing factor to the matching of /s/ and /ʃ/. It is relevant to be reminded in this context that we never find otherwise intuitively similar fricatives such as /f/ and /␪/ rhyming with each other. Obviously, for the historical material at hand a definitive answer is beyond recovery. If one had to choose nevertheless, the “unpacking” interpretation seems appealing because it is independently supported by the treatment of other sibilant-initial clusters in the same composition. Although the predominant practice with respect to /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters in the text is indeed consistent with the Old English tradition, the clusters /sp-/ and /st-/ can alliterate just with /s/. By analogy, a “transitional” cluster of a raised [s⊥ ] plus a palatal velar fricative [k’] or [¸c] for graphic <sc-> could alliterate just on the first consonant. As the following examples show, in Lagamon’s Brut all sibilant-initial clusters can be treated as genuine sequences of two consonants:37 (9)

A steores-man ham talde wil-spel; þat he Spaine isæih. Heo speken þer to sæhte; to sibbe and to some. & smat on Herigales sceld. þat his stæf atwaie wond; þe þer sæt swa sære; i þa spæc-huse. Lete we hit þus stonden; & speken of þan kinge. and smat hine þurh-ut mid his spere; and þas word spilede; and speken wið Sexisce men; and sæhte i-wurðen. and hehte heom comen sone; and speken wið him-seolue.

677 2045 4204 6546 7646 13252 14511 14838

Instances of the type shown in (9) are not very frequent in the text. Excluding rhyming lines, the above set includes all of the examples I could identify as violations of /sp-/ cluster alliteration in the entire text. Some additional /st-/ : /s-/ alliterations appear in lines 4, 180, 739, 1157, 1183, 1317, 2075, 2092, etc. The greater density of /st-/ : /s-/ alliteration is proportionate to the broader range of /st-/ initial lexical items used in the text. The ratio of /st-/ initial words used in the text to /sp-/ initial words is about 3 : 1 (44 : 13). As will become clear below, in spite of the fact that it does occur, such deployment of alliterating items does not disconfirm the statement that sibilant-initial clusters top the scale of cohesion for onset clusters. Lagamon’s Brut attests to a continuing strong preference for cohesive usage of the clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/ while it also points to a different conception of 37. In selecting examples of alliteration of the s + stop clusters with just /s/ I have tried to steer clear of instances where alliteration is clearly not the primary means of holding the line together, as in: Cnihtes swiðe stronge; igripen speren longe and speken of Maximiæn; þat was a swiðe stro[n]g mon.

11719 12513

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut

251

the principles of alliteration which allows the identity to be based on the visual image of the sound. It is possible that at this stage in the development of English verse alliteration could have been moving closer to being “a figure in Rhetorick, repeating and playing on the same letter,” which is how the earliest OED entry defines the term.38 Reliance on the acoustic similarity between the alliterating onsets still has the upper hand, however. Some indication that it was the acoustic signal and not solely the shape of the letter that continued to govern the choices comes from alliteration on non-initial, but stressed syllables, and alliteration of : , both spellings for the voiceless velar /k-/. This does not rule out “eye alliteration” entirely, but it is still the case that in Lagamon’s Brut alliteration remained primarily a matter of sound and not of letter. The transition from the classical model to new Middle English models of alliterative composition did not alter the essentially oral nature of the tradition with respect to alliterative choices. Alliteration can therefore continue to be treated, albeit cautiously, as a source of linguistic information. 6.3.2 Cluster alliteration in Lagamon’s Brut The tendency to treat a broad range of initial consonant clusters as units: /sm-, sw-, sl-, br-, dr-, gr-, tr-, fl-/ is very pronounced in Lagamon’s Brut. In collecting the data on the deployment of these clusters I have used the following criteria to determine whether a line can be counted as exhibiting cluster alliteration: a The cluster is repeated at least twice in the first three lifts in the line. b There are no competing candidates for alliteration in the line. c There are no clearly discernible effects of rhyme and syllable-counting. This is a very restrictive set of conditions for the selection of relevant data, perhaps too restrictive. Each criterion refers to an attested pattern of alliteration in the poem which cannot be considered “accidental.” Excluded are: crossalliteration, ab : ab, the second most frequent alliterative pattern in this work, accounting for half of the non-aa : ax lines, followed by ab : ba, followed by aa : aa and verses with both end-rhyme and alliteration which exceed the number of alliterative verses without end-rhyme, see Brandst¨adter (1912: 18–26). Criterion (c) allows some subjective interpretations; nevertheless, I have looked primarily for non-ambiguous lines. Whenever I refer to data that would not be licensed by 38. This is Blount’s 1656 definition. The first strictly technical definition of alliteration as a structural principle of Germanic verse is later; it dates to 1774 (OED and Burchfield 1974: 174). Further on the lexicographical history of this term see 3.3.

252

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

the criteria defined in this way, I separate them from the findings in the canonical verse type. The examples in (10) illustrate group alliteration in Lagamon’s Brut: (10)

inne griðe & inne friðe; & freoliche loueden. þer wes moni breoste; mid brade spere i-þurlud. Letten heo climben on hæh; cleopien to þon folke And alle þe flæmen; þe iflowe buð of Rome. Of Spaine ich wes ut idriuen; and al mi driht-liche folc. in-to ane muchele slæde. & slahliche his folc hudde; Marline gromede; & he grimliche spæc. mid sæxen to-snæ[ðd]e; snelle ðe ðeines. Breken braden speren; brustleden sceldes. Ofte me hine smæt; mid smærte erden. sweord aein sweorde; sweinde wel ilome.

94 2266 2965 2969 3098 4283 7926 8060 10052 10138 13870

This overview of cluster alliteration follows the line numeration in the text. Arranged according to the type of initial clusters, and starting with the sibilantinitial clusters /sm-, sn-, sw-/, the results are as follows: The cluster /sm-/ is found initially only in five lexical items: smiten ‘to smite’ and its forms, by far the most frequently used /sm-/ word in the poem (×75), smiðien, smið ‘smith,’ and the rarely used smal ‘small’ (×5), smart ‘sharp’ (×1), smokien ‘to smoke’ (×1). In view of the rarity of eligible items, the appearance of /sm-/ : /sm-/ alliteration is high: 269, 783, 7616, 10661, 10138, 13503, 15022, 15346, 15349. Thus /sm-/ can be classified as one of the clusters likely to alliterate cohesively most of the time.39 The number of eligible words starting with /sl-/ is comparable to the number of items with /sm-/ : slade ‘valley,’ slæht ‘battle,’ slæn ‘to slay, strike’ and its forms, slæpen ‘to sleep,’ slume(n) ‘doze.’ In addition to the occurrence of cluster alliteration in line 4283 cited in (10) above, /sl-/ alliterates with /sl-/ six more times, in lines 401, 485, 612, 8980, 9187, 12993.40 The words slæht, slæpen, and especially the forms of the word slæn, appear to be preferred lexical choices in view of the subject-matter; other /sl-/ words are rare in the text. The need to use narrative-specific words probably accounts for the fact that all of 39. Instances of singleton alliteration are rare outside the narrative-driven collocations of the verb smite; much of the action in some passages involves smiting with or on swords, spears, and schields. 40. Three lines: 401, 8980, 9187 use a second /sl-/ word in the final lift of the line, where the alliteration may not be functional, at lines 401 slæð: slepa, 8980 slume: slæpen, 9187 slumen: slæpen. The pairing of slumen: slepen ‘slumber-sleep’ appears also at lines 612, 16004. The alliterating phrase slume slepe is glossed by the MED as ‘a deep sleep.’ Further on the semantics of this pair, see Smith (2000: 91).

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253

the /sl-/ : /s-/ pairs in the poem involve slaying or sleeping.41 In that context, the frequency of /sl-/ unit alliteration is high. The tendency for this cluster to retain its integrity as cluster and copy itself as a unit is comparable and even somewhat more stable than that of /sm-/ because of the smaller proportion of singleton alliteration. The cluster /sn-/ appears only in three words in the text: snæde ‘cut,’ snawe ‘snow,’ snelle ‘quick, active.’ A total of twelve lines in the text include /sn-/ words, but in more than half of the cases the words are either in rhyming lines (9886, 11807, 12238), or in non-alliterating positions (10043, 13706, 14313, 14403). Even in this miniature pool, however, line 8060 cited in (10) above shows /sn-/ alliterating as a unit. The /sw-/ cluster appears in a much larger set of lexical items.42 The /sw/ initial words in the poem cover a very broad range of semantic fields and can therefore appear in many different alliterative collocations: an(d)swer(ien) ‘answer,’ swærkeð ‘grow dark,’ swæt ‘sweat,’ swain/swein ‘swain,’ swalen ‘burn up,’ swart ‘black,’ sweðen ‘bind,’ swefne ‘sleep,’ swelten/swulten ‘die,’ swende ‘lashed,’ sweord ‘sword,’ sw(e)ore ‘neck,’ swerien ‘swear,’ swete ‘sweet,’ swiðere (adj. comp.) ‘swifter,’ swift(e) ‘swift, swiftly,’ swike ‘traitor,’ swin ‘swine,’ swink, swinken ‘labor, travel,’ swipen ‘blows (pl),’ swippen ‘beat,’ swoghen ‘swoon.’ Within this generous array of options, the attestations of cluster alliteration are numerous: (11)

aiðes heo sworen; swiken þat heo nolden ðat of ðen ilke sweorde. enne swipe hefde; heo heom letten swalen. inne swærte fure; þe Uortigerne biswac; mid his swike-dome. Calibeorne his sweor[d]; he sweinde bi his side. And he sweinde touward Baldulfe; mid his swiðren honde.

2046 3814 5082 8948 10548 10691

Additional instances of /sw-/ cluster alliteration are found at lines 776, 1141, 2058, 2514, 5975, 8035, 8431, 10952, 11862, 13870, 15236, a total of 17 times. At least that many lines in the composition have a /sw-/ initial word in the final 41. The frequent alliterative use of these words is related to the details of the storyline. The pairing of synonyms should be distinguished from the stylistically-defined notion of “alliterative rank,” which involves the selection of a particular item from a group of synonyms or near-synonyms which are not phonologically related. 42. I am discounting repetition of swa ‘so,’ swilc ‘such,’ and even swi∂e ‘greatly,’ when used adverbially. As the pair of lines 740 and 745 shows, the intensifier was not used consistently as an alliterating word:

ðe king wes swi∂e særi; & seorhful on mode. Brutus wes swi∂e war; for wisdome him fulede.

740 745

254

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

lift.43 The impression this distribution leaves is of a strong tendency for the cluster to alliterate with itself. The words which are most frequently used as carriers of the cluster alliteration are the inflectional and derivative forms of sword (×12), swike ‘traitor’ (×11), and swear (×9). Proportionately, given the very large pool of items available for alliteration, /sw-/ words are not paired together as readily as /sm-/ and /sn-/, but the incidence of cluster alliteration is quite pronounced. Next, we will turn to clusters whose first consonant is a stop. The initial cluster /br-/ is very well represented in Lagamon’s Brut lexicon: twenty-three items, including the high frequency items brother, Brutus, and British. (12)

Brutus him swar an æð; breken þat he hit nælde. frommard his breoste; & breid eft on-ein. ðer wes moni breoste; mid brade spere i-ðurlud. A schip funde Brennes; bi þon brimme stonden. Breken braden speren; brustleden sceldes.

354 951 2266 2373 10052

The density of /br-/ alliteration in the poem is very high. The most frequently alliterating words are the forms of breken ‘break,’ followed by the name Brutus. An interesting case is presented by the word broðer ‘brother,’ extremely frequent in certain portions of the poem, as in lines 2153–2923, where it is matched to another /br-/ word fifteen times, though not necessarily in the first two lifts.44 The general impression is that /br-/ alliterates as a cluster frequently, but not as frequently as the /s-/ initial clusters. A relevant comparison here is the frequency of /sw-/ group alliteration, for which the poet draws on twenty-three items, the same number available for /br-/ alliteration. I estimate the ratio of /sw-/ to /br-/ alliteration, counting also instances where the final lift is involved in copying the cluster, at about 5 : 3 in favor of /sw-/. 43. See, for example, 441 swerde: swippen, 2694 swerien: swiken, 3734 swonc:asweote. Further instances of this type are found in lines 1967, 2107, 4082, 4444, 5381, 8870, 8884, 8890, 10603, 11283, 13790, 13867. A real excess of /sw-/ alliteration is found in two consecutive rhyming lines: seoððen sworen eorles; seoððen sweoren beornes. seoððen sweoren ðeines; seoððen sweoren sweines.

11412 11413

I take these to be cluster alliterations rather than /sw-/ : /s-/ alliterations because elsewhere seoððen is not placed in alliterating lifts, for example in lines 1292, 1335, 2122, etc. 44. The density of brother alliterating on /br-/ in this passage is partly due to its frequent matching with the proper name Brenne(s). Elsewhere, however, the poet uses brother non-alliteratively, mostly phrase, or verse-finally, which would indicate that the word was of low alliterative rank and the pairing with /br-/ initial proper names was opportunistic. The lines exhibiting such pairing are not included in my counts.

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut

255

If the correlation between single and cluster alliteration is mostly a function of the poet’s diction, one would expect similar rates of unit alliteration for clusters attested in lexical sets of comparable size. The clusters /kl-, kr-, gl-, dr-, fl-, fr-, ␪r-/ are found in more or less the same number of lexical items eligible for alliteration. Here are the details of the results from a full search of all 16,096 long lines of the text. There are eleven items in the text eligible for /kl-/ alliteration: clað(es) ‘clothes,’ clæf ‘cut,’ clæne ‘pure,’ clærc ‘scholar,’ cle(o)pien ‘speak,’ clibbe ‘club,’ cliseden ‘glistened,’ clives ‘cliffs,’ clude ‘rock,’ clumbe ‘climbed,’ clupte ‘embraced.’ In five lines /kl-/ unit alliteration is beyond doubt; to this should be added seven lines which are structurally different but nevertheless cannot be fully discounted.45 The unit alliteration appears in the lines cited in (13) and in lines 4339, 8078, 10402. (13)

Wes þa clude swiðe heh; þer heo acliue fuhten. Letten heo climben on hæh; cleopien to þon folke

959 2965

Alliterating words with /kr-/ in the poem are: cræft ‘craft,’ craken ‘break,’ Cristene ‘Christian,’ Cristindom ‘Christendom,’ cron ‘crane,’ crosce ‘fool,’ crucce ‘crutch,’ crune(en) ‘crown,’ crupen ‘crept,’ a total of nine items. Except for one rather uninteresting example, a kind of alliterative cheville, these words alliterate only on /k-/ words, not on other /kr-/ words: (14)

Cristine we beoð alle; and of Cristine cunne.

14860

The results for /gl-/ are as follows: there are ten alliterating /gl-/ words: gladien ‘give pleasure,’ gladscipe ‘gladness,’ glæne ‘clean,’ glæs ‘glass,’ glæuest ‘wisest,’ gleden ‘embers,’ gleomen ‘minstrels,’ gleowien ‘sing,’ glit ‘glides,’ glitend ‘glistened.’ In spite of the very high density of the forms of glad (×24) and glide (×15), cluster alliteration is rare:46 (15)

þis ðing glad me biuoren; and glitene[de] on golde.

7843

The potential for alliteration on the /dr-/ cluster exists for twelve lexical items, of which by far the most frequent one is Drihten ‘lord, God,’ though there is 45. In five instances the second /kl-/ word is in the final lift of the verse, as in he is mid sæ- cliuen; faste biclused. 9302. Further instances, in some cases mixed with rhyming are found in lines 428, 961, 10883, 11920–11921, 16084. 46. Two additional occurrences with /gl-/ in final position are found at lines 8104 Gloucestre: glæuest, 9588 gleomen: gleowen. An interesting matching: cleope[de]: Gloucestre appears in lines 8173, 8248. However, these are both ax/xa lines, and I have not counted those in my data. I will return to the issue of alliterating voiced–voiceless velars below.

256

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

also a great deal of drawing, driving, drinking, and dreaming in the text. Nine lines in the poem show cluster alliteration, of which five depend on the cooccurrence of forms of the words drink and dream ‘sleep’: 6720, 6760, 7025, 11499, 15396. Cluster alliteration on /dr-/ is illustrated in (16):47 (16)

Of Spaine ich wes ut idriuen; and al mi driht-liche folc. Argal þe wes idriuen ut. drof him wes on heorte; ðenne we habbeð idrunken. dreme we lude; heo drunken heo dremden; blisse wes among heom. ankeres heo up droen; drem wes on uolken.

3098 3285 6760 7025 12747

There are thirteen /fl-/ initial items eligible for alliteration: flan ‘arrows,’ Flaundres ‘Flanders,’ flæme ‘fugitive,’ flæs ‘meat,’ fleme ‘flight,’ flæmen ‘put to flight,’ fleon/flæn ‘flee, fly,’ fleoten ‘float,’ fleoð ‘flows,’ flit ‘dispute,’ flocke ‘flock,’ flod ‘water, sea,’ flor ‘floor.’ The concentration of attestations of flood, flow, flan ‘arrows,’ and especially forms of flee, is extremely high. The semantic range of the /fl-/ initial words is quite broad too. Nevertheless, the five lines cited in (17) represent the total set of /fl-/ cluster alliterations in the entire text:48 (17)

& þa quike men at-flowen; & muchel fleam makeden. Her comen blake fleen; and fluen in mone eene. And alle þe flæmen; þe iflowe bu∂ of Rome. and fluen after ðere sæ; swulc heo fluht hafden. þa sparwen heore flut nomen; & fluen to heore innen.

1241 1946 2969 11548 14611

The cluster /fl-/ is subject to a remarkably high incidence of simple left edge alliteration, /fl-/ : /f-/; I counted forty-seven instances of that type. The only cluster that shows a comparable level of singleton alliteration in this text is another fricative-initial cluster, /␪r-/, whose alliterative deployment, however, seems to be quite idiosyncratic. Initial /␪r-/ is found in fifteen lexical items used in the text:49 þralle(s) ‘slave,’ þrasten ‘penetrate,’ þrattien ‘threaten,’ þrætte ‘threat,’ þreo ‘three,’ þreottene ‘thirteen,’ þridde/þriddendale ‘third/one-third,’ þrie ‘thrice,’ þriste ‘bold,’ þritty ‘thirty,’ þrowe ‘course of time,’ þrucce ‘thrust,’ þrumde ‘compressed,’ þrungen ‘went,’ þruppe ‘passage.’ At first sight group alliteration on these words appears to be common, approximately at the level of frequency of /br-/ group alliteration. However, in most of the lines displaying /␪r-/ alliteration 47. Further matching of /dr-/ words in the structurally ambiguous final position occurs ten times at lines 48, 755, 913, 3343, 4011, 4053, 5105, 6781, 7462, 8862. 48. There are also six occurrences of /fl-/ in final or rhyming position at lines 518, 791, 924, 4172, 8026, 11150. 49. I am using the editorial thorn for all items in this group.

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut

257

twice one of the alliterating lifts is a form of the numeral three or its cognate thirty. Out of twenty-one lines in which group /␪r-/ alliteration occurs, only three do not involve the numeral:50 (18)

He tæh hine aein ane þrowe; & þreateð ðene castel. 322 Ah Bruttes him þrungen to; þræfliche swiðe 13875 Æiðer þratte oðer swiðe; and þruste mid worde. 15144

The great frequency of alliterating three, especially in lines where it is not obviously required by the narrative, suggests that the word is used as an alliterative “filler.” Lexical items that do not clearly further the discourse, and which do not have a particular stylistic flavor, can still be useful in furnishing the desired alliterating onset – this is what is meant here by the notion of “filler.” While the semantically redundant use of such words is driven by the desire to fill out the alliteration, and it is thus a valid stylistic criterion, its linguistic significance is more difficult to assess. Whether it is included in the /␪r-/ counts for Lagamon’s Brut is not of great consequence, but, as we shall see later, such alliterative fillers in fourteenth-century poetry, words such as grete ‘great,’ and clene ‘entirely’ do belong in the overall picture. The situation with /␪r-/ is complicated by the fact that the incidence of singleton alliteration, i.e. /␪r-/ : /␪-/ is also high. I counted twenty-four such pairings, though, admittedly, many of the lines in which /␪r-/ appears to alliterate on /␪-/ are non-canonical and may involve rhyme, as in 229, 267, 680, 836, 2387, etc. The information on cluster alliteration gathered in this way is sufficiently varied across cluster types to obviate the need for covering all possible initial clusters.51 The chart below shows the results for group alliteration collected and described in this section; the clusters are arranged according to their composition, starting with the sibilant-initial clusters /sm-, sn-, sw-/. The first column lists the alliterating cluster. The second column records the number of lexical items used alliteratively from which the choices can be made. The third column 50. The numeral is used in group alliteration in lines 28, 640, 1932, 1944, 4352, 4883, 8051, 8279, 10341, 11052, 11665, 13278, 13292, 13293, 13294, 13633, 14314, 14580. In five lines (1944, 4352, 5993, 8279, 10341), the alliteration is based on the repetition of the phrase þreo dæies and þreo nit ‘three days and three nights’ which is clearly a ready-made half-line. This kind of consideration intersects and probably sometimes overrides the linguistic considerations in the selection of the alliterating items. In addition, alliteration on /␪r-/ is possible in the fourth lift and in lines with rhyme. Except for line 248 þralle: þretiað, all such lines rely on three or its forms for alliteration. 51. One cluster for which the data are extremely rich is the cluster /fr-/. Group alliteration in aa/ax verses appears more than twenty-five times in lines 94, 242, 532, 809, 1933, 2713, etc. I counted also eleven occurrences of group alliteration in other verse types: 239, 339, 2606, 6953, 7152, 11090, etc.

258

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

shows the number of lines where the clusters alliterate as units at least twice in aa/ax type lines, and the fourth, the number of other types of lines, aa/aa, ax/xa, xa/aa, etc., or rhyming lines where a cluster is copied at least twice. (19)

Cluster

No. of items

Copied in aa/ax lines

Copied in other lines

Sm-

5

6

4

sl-

5

4

3

sn-

3

1

0

Sw-

23

17

18

br-

23

11

11

kl-

11

5

7

kr-

9

1

0

gl-

10

1

2

dr-

12

9

10

fl-

13

5

6

␪r-

15

18

3

The survey of some of the alliterating clusters in Lagamon’s Brut thus allows us to observe some tendencies. On the whole, unit alliteration appears to draw more often on s- initial clusters than on stop-initial clusters or fricative-initial clusters. Although the results do not present a very clear hierarchy of preferences, the incidence of unit alliteration decreases from /s-/ initial to stop-initial clusters, as for example a comparison of the numbers for /sl /to the numbers for /kl-/ and /gl-/, or a comparison between /sw-/ and /br-/, suggests.52 Fricative-initial clusters and stop-initial clusters do not show much difference: the reference here is to clusters which have comparable representations in the vocabulary and show comparable frequency of unit alliteration: /dr-/ and /kl-/ on the one hand, and /fr-/ and /␪r-/ on the other.53 Finally, the high density of /␪r-/ cluster alliteration at the bottom of the chart can be attributed partly to the ease of inserting an alliterative cheville. One could also speculate that another influence on the behavior of the cluster /␪r-/ may come from articulation, i.e. in addition to the 52. One interpretation of the results for /dr-/ is that in addition to indicating cohesion, they can be attributed to the text-specific concentration of semantically compatible items (drink : dream) that can easily fit within the confines of an alliterative line. 53. I take the rarity of /gl-/ group alliteration as a fact possibly related to the low overall incidence of this cluster in the lexicon and the absence of semantic ‘filler’ with /gl-/.

6.3 Cluster alliteration: Lagamon’s Brut

259

perceptual properties of a cluster, articulatory proximity may play a role. The fact that /␪r-/ is a homorganic cluster may be relevant in comparing /␪r-/ to some velar-initial clusters, /kr-/, /gl-/, which behave less cohesively. I will return to this issue below.54 6.3.3 Why is Lagamon’s Brut good linguistic evidence? As adumbrated in 6.3.1, the patterns of alliteration in Lagamon’s Brut are far from perfect. A calculation based on Oakden’s (1930/1968: 143) sample counts shows that about 76.3 percent of the half-lines in the poem are linked by alliteration.55 The distribution of alliteration in the line is often unorthodox as compared to the standard ax/ax or aa/ax of classical Old English. Crossalliteration, ab/ab, excessive alliteration, aa/aa, alliterating final lifts, ax/xa, and other alliterative combinations are frequent, Thus, as mentioned above, is it difficult to estimate the extent to which alliteration is structurally important for some lines, or simply ornamental. The issue is of little consequence for the points made here, however. There can be no question that even the non-aa/ax lines cited in this section represent a deliberate attempt to match identical onsets, and therefore constitute reliable evidence for the linguistic characteristics of the alliterating units. I chose to illustrate the changed perception of what makes for “good” alliteration with data from Lagamon’s Brut for several reasons. First, Lagamon’s translation of the Norman-French Chronicle fills a chronological gap in the history of English alliterative versification. It is a reliably datable very early text, and the paucity of material from that period is notorious. There are no studies or statistics available in the literature covering the specific alliterative choices with regard to initial clusters made in that composition.56 In that sense, the material presented here is genuinely new verse information which can be used both 54. The formant transitions of velars take longer than those of alveolars or labials, cf. Ladefoged (1982: 183). 55. Oakden’s sample contains 1,885 lines (about 12 percent of the total 16,096 long lines in the composition), of which 56 are discounted as metrically corrupt, i.e. having no rhyme or alliteration. From the remaining 1,829 lines, 1,170 half-lines are linked by alliteration only, 226 are linked by alliteration and also rhyme or assonance. The alliterative lines are concentrated towards the early part of the narrative, and rhymed lines are characteristic of the latter portions, so the percentage does not reflect accurately the density of alliteration across the text. Oakden’s results agree with the fully comprehensive study by Brandst¨adter (1912), whose dissertation covers the entire text of the Cotton Caligula A ix. 56. There are no published formal studies or statistics covering the specific alliterative choices made in any Middle English composition, for that matter. However, some useful information on many of the texts, especially with respect to /sp-, st-, sk-/ alliteration can be gleaned from Schumacher (1914), whose survey does not cover Lagamon’s Brut, and from the editorial notes on individual texts.

260

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

for phonological reconstruction and for confirming or disconfirming more general linguistic hypotheses regarding the nature and behavior of onset clusters. Another reason for selecting and trusting Lagamon’s work is that the alliterative lines in the poem are neither subject to the metrical constraints of the classical alliterative meter, nor do they follow constraints comparable to the tighter reinvented rules of fourteenth-century alliterative verse.57 Lagamon must have been familiar with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, though he obviously did not understand it fully. Such familiarity, aided by the inherent cohesiveness of /sp-, st-/, would account for the fact that the pattern illustrated in (6) at the beginning of section 6.3.1 is the dominant one for the s+stop clusters. In spite of the absence of this type of cluster matching in the original work, the poet applied the classical Anglo-Saxon model fairly loyally. At the same time the influential exemplars of late Old English alliterative prose, where /sp-, st-/ cluster alliteration was ignored, provided a basis for a less strict observance of this particular convention. It is significant for the history of alliteration in English that in the earliest ME “transitional” verse compositions the archetypal cluster alliteration of /sp-, st-/ is both strong and violable. This is the blueprint for the extension of cohesion alliteration to other initial clusters: /sm-, sl-, sw-, fl-, fr-, br-, dr-, tr-, kl-/. If we approach the text with that understanding, then the frequency of cluster alliteration becomes a legitimate correlate of a cluster’s linguistic suitability for wholesale copying. A related factor which makes Lagamon’s Brut a useful text in tracing the patterns of alliteration is that it is a translation. The Middle English version of the Chronicle is the work of a bilingual speaker, or at least someone whose proficiency in Norman French must have been considerable. It is known that by the twelfth century, the /sp-, st-, sk-/ of late Latin were no longer tolerated either in Old French and, possibly, in Norman French (Pope 1934/1961: 217).58 The special angle here is that since these clusters were unavailable in the source language, they must have had a pronounced “Germanic” ring to them which appealed to an antiquarian like Lagamon. Using these clusters cohesively, while not observing the structural frame of Old English verse and often succumbing to the temptation of stress-alternating rhythm and rhyme, the composer reasserts 57. I have addressed the definitions and interpretations of the transitional form of meter in Minkova (1997a: 435). That essay, devoted mostly to the recovery of the changing prosodic patterns in The Proverbs of Alfred, presents also my arguments regarding the use of “amorphous” verse as an empirical base for linguistic reconstruction. Crucially, my position is that metrically “loose” compositions have certain advantages over strict forms of verse; while they are unhelpful with respect to the history of meter, they can be more revealing of the linguistic status of the entities used in such verse. See also the discussion in 2.5 above. 58. See also 5.6.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

261

the non-accidental association between alliteration as a property of verse and the special treatment of initial s+stop clusters. This is not the same as assuming that any cluster alliteration was seen as part of the overall conception of what constitutes proper metrical practice – there is a clear imbalance in the frequency with which the various clusters are used. In other words, the usefulness of the text lies also in supplying evidence that in spite of the potential negative interference from a foreign phonological model, linguistic features such as stressed syllable onset identity up to the first perceptual break continue to influence the choice of diction. The acoustic cohesion responsible for the strength of the Old English convention of /sp-, st-, sk-/ alliteration provided the basis for new patterns. Cluster alliteration was reinterpreted to include a much broader set of onset sequences. To previous researchers the new models of alliteration have looked very much like across-the-board cluster alliteration, inconsistently applied. As we will see later, the preference tendencies found in Lagamon’s Brut are even more pronounced in the fourteenth century, pointing to a linguistic rationale of the patterns.

6.4

Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

Alliterative composition flourished in the West, the West Midlands, and the Northwest of England in the fourteenth century. The patterns of zusammengesetzte St¨abe recorded in the Brut are attested amply in these later compositions. Middle English textual scholars agree that the alliterative forms which evolved in the fourteenth century draw on the Anglo-Saxon classical models, but are in no way metrical “copies” of the old poems. Nor is it assumed that the “alliterative revival” was a re-emergence of a continuous, unbroken oral tradition. The variety of metrical forms and deviations in the fourteenth-century alliterative corpus is such that imposing an Anglo-Saxon metrical template on them is impossible. The most likely account of the existing variation is that all poets were familiar with some very general metrical rules, but that each individual poet composed verse according to rules and constraints of their own devising.59 One feature that compositions from all dates do share, however, is the tendency to treat consonantal groups as single units; it is well attested throughout the corpus, described by Schumacher (1914: 40) as ein gern benutztes Reimmittel “a willingly used rhyming pattern” and as “popular” by Oakden 1930/1968: 59. See Cable (1991), Duggan (1986b, 1988), and the discussion in 2.5 above. In the context of one specific text, Wynnere and Wastoure, on this point, see also Trigg (ed.) (1990: xxix–xxxiii) and the references therein.

262

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

165–66). Both scholars attribute the observed fluctuations in the rate of cluster alliteration to varying poetic skills in achieving more sonorous effects. I will proceed with the presentation of the data on cluster alliteration first with reference to an early alliterative “revival” text, Wynnere and Wastoure. This will be followed by a survey of the evidence from The Wars of Alexander and Piers Plowman. 6.4.1 Wynnere and Wastoure One of the most tightly structured poems in the early Middle English alliterative corpus is the mixed dialect composition Wynnere and Wastoure, dated between c. 1352 and 1370.60 Of the 503 alliterative long lines in the poem 477 exhibit a minimum of three alliterating lifts per line (Trigg 1990: xxxii). Eliminating unreadable lines and mechanical errors, this presents a picture of remarkable (96.5 percent) consistency of metrical form. The text shows the expected spand st- alliterations as in (20): (20)

For if thay strike one stroke / stynte þay ne thynken Thoo þat spedfully will spare / and spende not to grete, Thynkes to strike or he styntt / and stroye me for euer. þe spyres and þe onge sprynge / e spare to our children

107 224 229 298

There are no exceptions to the cluster alliteration of /sp-/ and /st-/ in Wynnere and Wastoure, see lines 224, 238, 325, 398 for /sp-/ and 107, 127, 142, 195, 229, 252, 265 for /st-/. The practice with respect to /sk-/ is difficult to assess because there are only two lines in which it is attested: (21)

þus are e scorned by skyll / and schathed þeraftir þi skathill sectours / schal seuer þam aboute

362 443

In l. 362 the borrowing schathed < Old Norse scaði ‘injury, damage’ dates back to Old English, and it is possible that in Middle English both /sk-/ and /ʃ-/ pronunciations for this word existed side by side.61 The alliteration in l. 443 could be simply on /s-/ without involvement of the modal auxiliary schal. The skathill 60. The poem exists in a single version found in British Library Additional MS 31042, in a miscellany compiled by Robert Thornton in the early 1450s. The text used is Trigg (1990). For some electronic searches I have used Wynnere and Wastoure, ed. by Warren Ginsberg, originally published in Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992, at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/ginwin.htm. On the dating, see Trigg’s Introduction (1990: xxv). The “mixed dialect” is a compromise between forms suggesting North Central Midlands, the Northwest Midlands, and some East Midland features; for further discussion and references see Trigg (1990: xxi–xxii). 61. According to the MED some forms in sch- may belong to ME shathen < OE sceaðian, scaðian ‘harm.’

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

263

sectours ‘harmful executors’ is a particularly interesting matching in that it is a rare and possibly fortuitous example of /skV-/ being matched to /sVk/ – the pattern expected for clusters of non-sibilant obstruents + sonorants.62 The OE <sc-> cluster is likely to be a /ʃ/ in this text; this is also suggested by the fact that it is usually spelled <sch>. Throughout the poem <sch-> is found alliterating with itself, as shown in (22): (22)

Schowen owte of the schawes, in schiltrons þay felle Schynethe alle for scharpynynge of the schauynge iren Schew hym of fatt chepe scholdirs ynewe

53 185 481

Further instances of <sch> : <sch> appear in lines 317, 403, 432. Along with this type of matching there are some instances in which <sch-> is paired with <s->: (23)

For to [schadewe]63 our sones / bot þe schame es our ownn, (Nedeles saue e þe soyle / for sell it e thynken.) For to gyf ensample of siche / for to schewe oþer And make ði sides in silken / schetys to lygge

400–1 421 463

This picture is not unlike the findings in Lagamon’s Brut. Without additional confirmation, therefore, the practice in Wynnere and Wastoure on its own cannot be taken as proof of the monophonemicization of the <sc-> of Old English to /ʃ-/ in the dialect of the poet. All three instances of <sch-> pairing with <s-> in (23) could be interpreted as “eye rhymes,” though the matching of ‘sheep’ with <scholdirs> ‘shoulders’ in l. 481 makes it more likely that the basis for the matching in (23) is the acoustic closeness of /ʃ-/ : /s-/. This is tentative; there is a distant possibility that the line belongs to the 3.5 percent of lines in the poem which violate the pattern of three alliterating lifts per line. The frequency of /ʃ-/ : /s-/ alliteration in the poem is half of that for selfalliteration of <sch->. Since the overall numbers are low, comparing the rate of occurrence is not helpful for reconstructing the phonetic nature of <sch->. A broader evidential basis, however, would support a hypothesis of [ʃ-] matching 62. An example of the more predictable matching is the /bir-/ /br-/ pairing in line 426:

þat þou schal birdes vpbrayd of þaire bright wedis The word birde ‘noble woman’ was a partial synonym of the familiar bride ‘young woman, bride’; it is sometimes confused with it. The perceptual similarity between the two would have contributed to the eventual disappearance of birde, which was a strictly poetic word in late Middle English (MED). 63. The manuscript reading is saue to. Trigg (1990: 13, 41) adopts Gollancz’s emendation of saue to to schadewe “on grammatical and stylistic rather than alliterative grounds,” noting, correctly, that the <s-> : <sch-> alliteration would get some support from the <s-> alliteration in line 401.

264

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

imperfectly [s-], or some more palatalized, or more laminal realization of /s-/.64 Singleton matching is suggested also by the commonness of <s-> : <sch-> in non-northern alliterative texts and phonological hindsight: as will be shown below, <s-> : <sch-> alliteration is not an isolated phenomenon in Middle English; spelling and subsequent history point to monophonemicization too. The changing spelling habits, i.e. the use of <s(s)> for [ʃ-], may have contributed more to the identification of <s-> with <sch-> than in other potential instances of “eye rhyme.”65 Not surprisingly for a composition which shows such discipline with respect to metrical form and the observance of alliteration, the model of sp- stalliteration is extended to other initial clusters: (24)

With brases of broun stele / brauden full thikke Croked full craftily / and kembid in the nekke I pryke and I pryne / and he the purse opynes Sythen dropeles drye / in the dede monethe And sayne God wil graunt it his grace / to grow at þe last With [sy]de66 slabbande sleues / sleght to þe grounde

113 151 232 276 398 411

Predictably, cluster alliteration of the type illustrated in (24) is not totally pervasive. It is frequently the case that only two or three of the lifts in the line will alliterate on a particular cluster, as in lines 151, 276 above.67 Even such “imperfect” examples, however, show intentionality and provide sufficient support for the reconstruction of what constituted a basis for preference in onset matching. Once again, the possibility that the matching was visual, and not acoustically based, must be considered. The strongest argument against taking simple letter identity as the basis for alliteration would be the unevenness of cluster alliteration across various consonant combinations. My position is that for the creator of the poem and its copyist(s) alliteration was a structural desideratum which was the better satisfied the more fully the stressed onsets matched each 64. Schumacher (1914: 95–96) considers and rejects the possibility that <s->- initial words could be pronounced with /ʃ/, which would make the pairing perfect. The dialect evidence points to /ʃ/ pronunciations of <s-> words in the North (for example cinder, sew, soon, suet, suit). One would expect, therefore, to find <s-> : <sch-> alliterations in the North, which is not confirmed in the Northern texts Schumacher surveyed: The Wars of Alexander, The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, Death and Life, etc. 65. Throughout this study (except in the citation for line 129 of the Otho manuscript of Lagamon’s Brut in 6.3.1) I have used <s-> for the Middle English orthographic long s, a lower-case form of the letter s, . 66. MS has elde. The emendation to sleghe ‘skillfully made’ proposed by Turville-Petre is rejected by Trigg (1990: 42) on semantic grounds. 67. The type of matching represented in line 232: pryke : pryne : purse will be discussed below.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

265

other. That the matching was phonological, and not scribal, is made clear further by the alliteration in lines 70, 340, where /k-/ is written in three different ways. The alliteration in (25) must be a matter of sound identity, not of spelling: (25)

Was casten full clenly / in quarters foure Kiddes clouen by þe rigge, / quarterd swannes

70 340

As argued elsewhere in this book, such usage supports the principle of the primacy of the acoustic signal, and the principle can be extended to the deployment of clusters in alliteration. Continuing with the survey of the data on zusammengesetzte St¨abe in Wynnere and Wastoure, I will first look at the distribution of group alliteration of /s-/ + sonorant clusters. The clusters /sm-/ and /sn-/ are attested in one lexical item each: smytte ‘fight’ and snyppes ‘snipes.’ Each of these words appears only once in the poem, line-finally and outside the alliterative scheme. The cluster /sl-/ is better represented: it is the onset of five words in the text, each one of them used only once. The adjective slee ‘misleading’ is used outside the structural alliteration at line 6, and the verb slees ‘destroys’ alliterates on /s-/ in line 302. The other three /sl-/ words slabbande- sleues- sleght are concentrated in line 411. The consistency of the metrical form in Wynnere and Wastoure makes it likely that the selection of lexical items will be driven to a considerable extent by their appropriateness for alliteration. Therefore the fact that there is only one incidence of /sl-/ : /s-/ alliteration while three /sl-/ words co-occur in the same line is a strong indication that /sl-/ was ranked fairly high in terms of cohesiveness. There are seven /sw-/ words in the text, used either non-alliteratively, or in conjunction with each other. The cluster appears to behave cohesively in the following two lines: (26)

And I was swythe in a sweuen / sweped belyue Late vs swythe with oure swerdes / swyngen togedirs;

46 320

Some /sw-/ items, especially when the cluster is followed by a back vowel, started losing a post-consonantal /-w-/ from the twelfth century onwards.68 One should allow for the possibility of cluster simplification for the adverb swythe, often a prosodically weak word, as in line 121, where it is used non-alliteratively. Dialectally, such simplification is suggested by the spelling <sude> in the southwest and the southwest Midlands. However, even if swythe is discounted, /sw-/ self-alliteration seems intentional in the lines cited in (26). Crucially, there is not a single example of alliteration on <s-> : <sw->; 68. For some examples see Jordan/Crook (1974: 155), Lass (1992b: 67).

266

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

this would suggest that the alliteration in lines 46, 320 is indeed based on two /sw-/ lifts.69 The numbers are small, but telling; as will be shown below, some stop-initial clusters are represented by the same number of vocabulary items as /sw-/, yet the results are much more evenly distributed among the various alliterative options. Non-sibilant initial clusters of comparable frequency in the lexicon of the poem are /br-/ with 24 headwords, /kr-/, /tr-/ (7 headword entries each), /fl-/ (9 headword entries), and /dr-/, /gr-/, /fr-/ (10 headword entries each).70 The chart below summarizes the search on these clusters in Wynnere and Wastoure: (27)

# of words Singleton Cluster OR1 :OVR1 / Cluster in the text alliteration alliteration OR2

Nonalliterating

st

16

0

7

0

14

sp

13

0

4

0

4

sw

7

0

2

0

4

br

24

17

13

4

3

kr

7

3

2

2

2

tr

7

2

2

1

2

gr

10

2

4

3

8

dr

10

4

4

0

1

fl

9

4

1

6

0

fr

10

4

0

1771

4

69. For comparison, in The Siege of Jerusalem <sw-> also alliterates as a group: 317 swykel : sweng : swerd, 1172: swalten : sweng : swerd, similarly at lines 536, 1145. 70. I have also checked the distribution of /kl-/ (6 headwords) and /gl-/ (4 headwords). /kl-/ words are outside the alliteration three times, they alliterate on the obstruent nine times, and twice the rhyme is richer: /kl-/ : /kr-/ in 59, and /kl-/ : /kol/ in 293. /gl-/ alliterates on the obstruent three times, and once on /gr-/ in line 391. The only interesting result is a line in which the alliteration indicates voicelessness of the initial obstruent in : For the colde wyntter and the kene with gleterand frostes 275 Only four words used in the texts start with /␪r-/. One of them, three, is not used for alliteration, and the other three are bundled together in a single line: The throstills full throly they threpen togedire

37

71. The alliteration on /fr-/ : /fVr-/ is in lines 21, 66, 78, 102, 138, 160, 170, 272, 287, 311, 402, 434. Alliteration on /fr-/ : /f(V)l-/ is found in lines 78, 155, 159, 179, 287.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

267

The three horizontal sections of the chart separate the clusters according to type: sibilant-initial, stop-initial, and fricative-initial. Within these types, the clusters are arranged according to the number of headwords with that cluster used in the text. I have excluded sibilant-initial clusters of low frequency, i.e. /sl-, sm-, sn-/. The third column gives the number of instances of the obstruent–sonorant cluster alliterating only on the obstruent (/tr-/ : /t-/, /fr-/ : /f-/), etc., i.e. OR : O, where O = obstruent, and R = sonorant. The fourth column lists the number of lines where the cluster alliterates cohesively at least in two of the three lifts in the line (OR : OR). The fifth column records the number of lines in which the clusters are matched by a copy of the cluster with an epenthesized vowel, for example /kr-/ : /kVr-/, as in crafte : Carmes ‘craft : Carmelite friars’ in line 176, /fl-/ : /fVl/ as in fele : floures : folde ‘many : flowers : (un)fold’ in line 35; these instances of splitting the cluster are marked as OR : OVR. The fifth column includes also lines in which there is “near” cluster alliteration, defined as identical obstruents in the first onset position, but either /-l-/ or /-r-/ in the sonorant position, for example /fl-/ : /fr-/ as in flowres : Fraunse ‘flowers : France’ in line 78.72 Such alliteration is marked as OR1 : OR2 . The last column records the number of lines in which a word with the relevant cluster is used nonalliteratively. The alliterative patterns recorded in the penultimate column (OR1 : OVR1 /OR2 ) obviously represent two different types of phonological similarity. They are bundled together here only because jointly these two types contrast with the instances of fully cohesive alliteration. Within a more carefully discriminating account the similarity judgements for OR1 : OR2 (greves : gladdes ‘aggrieves : gladdens,’ l. 391) and OR1 : OVR1 (grete : gartare : gerede ‘great; garter; geared,’ l. 94) are likely to be different. Typologically, we can expect OR1 : OR2 to be judged more similar than OR1 : OVR1 . This is due to the salience of precedence relationships in the “mental map” of the clusters, the latter a reference to ongoing work by Steriade (2001). Fleischhacker (2000) has found that the similarity based on skipping the second segment in the OR clusters exceeds precedence-based similarity, for example flip is more similar to fip than to filp. The data in Wynnere and Wastoure support these observations for stop-initial clusters; the difference is most pronounced for /br-/ which alliterates on /b-/ much more often than on either /bVr-/ or /bl/. For fricative-initial clusters the ratio is reversed. Apart from the clear-cut separation of sibilant-initial clusters from the remaining clusters, the most striking result of this search is the discrepancy in 72. The full line includes also an instance of OR:OVR matching: Two with flowres of Fraunse before and behynde

78

268

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

the last four rows in (27). It points to a pronounced tendency for the fricative initial clusters /fl-/ and /fr-/ to resist cohesive alliteration. In that, these clusters contrast with the sibilant-initial clusters which never alliterate in that way, see the shaded cells in the top three rows and the bottom two rows. On the other hand, /fl-/ and /fr-/ seem to be highly desirable alliterative choices if the similarity is extended to the OR1 : OVR1 /OR2 types, noticeably more so than the corresponding /gr-/ and /dr-/ clusters which are represented by the same number of words in the text. Drawn from lexical pools of comparable size, and alliterating just on the obstruent at about the same rate, the /dr-/, /gr-/ versus /fl-/, /fr-/ differences are significant also because they point to the inversion of the rate of occurrence of cluster alliteration versus OR1 : OVR1 /OR2 alliteration. With /fl-/ and /fr-/, in attempting maximum similarity of the stressed onsets without actually using words beginning with the same cluster, the poet resorts to a broader interpretation of similarity. The two “broader” strategies here are to bind together words which resemble each other because of the similarty between the cluster as a whole and the cluster when split by a vowel, or to match /r-/ to the lateral sonorant /l-/. The following set of examples illustrate this point for /fr-/: (28)

þat were fourmed full fayre appon fresche letters Two with flowres of Fraunce before and behynde, One of the ferlyeste frekes that faylede hym never: Than alle the faire fre londe that ye byfore haden. The Frydaye and his fere one the ferrere syde,

66 78 102 272 311

As noted above, jointly the two options FR : FVR and FR1 : FR2 , where F = non-sibilant fricative, exceed significantly the number of attestations in which the cluster alliterates simply on /f-/ without further attempts at matching the rest of the words. Since such patterns are not found at all with the sibilantinitial clusters, and are not common at all with the stop + sonorant clusters, we can infer that the degree of cohesiveness of the fricative-initial clusters is lower than that of stop-initial clusters. The results represent a continuum of similarity. Taking two ends of the continuum as the two terms of comparison, the shaded cells in (27), we can specify the similarity relationship among different pairs of clusters. The difference () between a fricative + sonorant cluster (FR1 ) and either a split cluster (FVR1 ) or a fricative + another sonorant (FR2 ) is smaller than the corresponding difference between a sibilant-initial cluster (SC1 ) and a split cluster (SVC1 ) or a sibilant + another consonant (SC2 ). This is summarized below:

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

269

Fig. 6.1 Cluster alliteration in Wynnere and Wastoure (29)

 (FR1 -↔ {FVR1 -, FR2 -}) <  (SC1 - ↔ {SVC1 -, SC2 -})  (fr- ↔ {fVr-, fl-}) <  (sC1 - ↔ {sVC1 -, sC2 -})  = difference, F = non-sibilnt fricative, R = sonorant, S = sibilant

In prose, the formula represents the proposition that, for example /fr-/ is more similar to /fur-/ or /fl-/ than /sm-/ would be to /sum-/ or /sn-/. The difference would be larger for /sp-, st-, sk-/, while stop-initial clusters will occupy an intermediate position. All of these clusters are well formed; and a reference to cohesion, or Contiguity alone (for more on that term see below), cannot capture this state of things; we need to refine the conditions under which specific pairings are more likely to occur. Figure 6.1 shows the percentages of group alliteration measured against all alliterating instances in Wynnere and Wastoure. 6.4.2 The Wars of Alexander The Wars of Alexander (WA) is a tightly structured alliterative text originating most likely in the Northwest Midlands, see Duggan and Turville-Petre (1989: xlxx). The dating of the original composition is uncertain and ranges between 1361 and the first half of the fifteenth century (1989: xlii–xliii). It survives in two versions, both of them distinctly northern. For my search I used the 1989 EETS edition by Duggan and Turville-Petre. The edited text, which takes the longer and more complete Ashmole manuscript as its basis, but also records the readings in the Dublin manuscript, is 5,803 lines long and lacks an ending.73 73. I am grateful to Hoyt Duggan for making available to me a machine-readable version of the edited text.

270

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

Pearsall (1977: 168) describes the poet of WA as “a most conscious and sophisticated stylist, the ‘poet’s poet’ of the revival.” The poem is remarkable for its “verbal splendours,” “alliterative furore,” “brilliant display of ornate diction,” “wealth and extravagance of language,” a vehicle of “vivid visualizing imagination.” Alliteration is observed unfailingly throughout the poem. Duggan and Turville-Petre believe that the Wars-poet “always wrote verses of the form aa/ax, except in a few dozen lines with vocalic alliteration throughout the line,” and that “with regard to alliterating sounds, the Wars-poet appears to have had rather more severe standards of alliteration than other poets in the tradition” (1989: xviii–xix). It is interesting to see how someone who controls the metrical form so well, and stretches the vocabulary resources to their utmost, treats initial clusters. Alliteration on /sp-, st-, sk-/ is completely predictable and uniform throughout the poem. The glossary to the text contains 148 /st-/-initial entries. Counting the results only for the first 2,131 lines, up to the beginning of Passus Nine, which covers about 37 percent of the text, I found no instances of splitting the cluster, and no instances where only two of the three alliterating lifts are on /st-/. For all other clusters the results cover the entire edited text. The cluster /sp-/ is represented by 52 alliterating lexical items which are used either nonalliteratively, or in conjunction with two other /sp-/ words in the same line. There are 29 lines in the text in which the alliteration is based on three /sp-/ words per line. There are no exceptions to this pattern. The Old English cluster <sc-> alliterates with itself; the most reasonable reconstruction for it is that it represented /ʃ/. It is spelled <sch->, <sh->, <s->. There is a single instance of /s/ alliterating with /ʃ/ (schogs ‘shakes’; son-tree ‘sun-tree’ : schoke ‘shook’ : schire ‘bright’ at l. 5145).74 The cluster /sk-/ in words of Scandinavian origin can be spelled <sk->, <sck>, <sc->, and <sch->, for example <skapid> ‘escaped,’ also <scapid> and <schapid>, <schew> ‘sky,’ also <skewys> pl., <scere> ‘frighten,’ <skerrid>, p.t. This variety of scribal options does not affect the alliteration, which remains clearly cluster-based. Forty-one words in the text are potential participants in /sk-/ alliteration. Sixteen lines show /sk-/ words in three lifts in the line. The only other placement of /sk-/ initial words is in non-alliterating positions. Again, the pattern is completely consistent.75 74. See Duggan and Turville-Petre (1989: xix, xxxiv). 75. The only line which might suggest /sk-/ : /s-/ alliteration is in the Ashmole Ms 1.4862, where sex ‘six’ is in the margin: And [sex] score on þis side and seuen at was armed

4862

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

271

The number of /s-/+ nasal stop words decreases significantly. Only twelve /sn-/ initial words are used in the poem. Even so, the model of cohesive /s-/ + stop alliteration is observed for /sn-/, with four lines showing three /sn-/ lifts per line, 1683, 3761, 4123, 4224, and no instances of split alliteration. The pool of nine lexical items with /sm-/ is the smallest among the sets of cluster-initial words in the poem. These words appear three times per line in seven lines: 1432, 3470, 3798, 3806, 5398, 5550, 5641. Unlike the other s-initial clusters surveyed so far, however, /sm-/ alliterates with /s-/ twice, at 3484 and 5769. Both instances involve the word smargdone ‘emerald,’ and it seems that the /s-/ alliteration may be a conscious avoidance of repetition, since the same word alliterates on /sm-/ in adjacent passages in lines 3470, 3798, 3806, and in 5398, 5550. The cluster /sl-/ is represented by nineteen alliterating words.76 This cluster too shows cohesive behavior, yet the results here are more varied. In seven lines the cluster appears in lifts twice or more than twice per line. Of these, three lines have three /sl-/ lifts: (30)

þan slade he slily away and he fra slepe rys[ys] þat ilk slymand slugh quen e ere slide hyne Fand him slowmand on slepe and sleely him rayses

2996 4585 5300

In four lines, 38, 2346, 2691, 2759, the cluster /sl-/ is used twice per line. In another four lines the alliteration is on /sl-/ : /sel-/: 475, 1146, 1468, 2215. Singleton alliteration on /sl-/ appears in two lines 179, 3088.77 Duggan and Turville-Petre (1989: 281) find support in the Latin sources for the emendation sex, first proposed in 1901 on the basis of alliteration, i.e. /sk-/ does not alliterate on /s-/ elsewhere, so the alliteration is on /s-/. The emendation is endorsed further by the fact that score, even when used verse-medially, is weakly stressed and falls outside the alliteration, as in lines 1495, 3305, 5687. 76. I am excluding slike (a) ‘such’ which is regularly placed in the dip and does not participate in the alliteration, for example: Lo maistir slike a myschefe and maynly hire pleynes þat chefe sall to a chiftan and slike a chefe maistir

399 440

For this distribution of slike, see further lines 62, 67, 69, 99, 149, 488, 531, 539, 561, etc. The exclusion is also needed because I am using the edited text where the variants slike–suche are not recorded (Duggan and Turville-Petre 1989: xlv). 77. This count would be higher if one includes the alliteration of two very frequent words in the text: sleep and slay and their forms. I attribute the “anomalous” singleton alliteration in this case to unavoidable discourse pressures, i.e. such alliteration is driven by the need to use a particular word in a particular narrative context. Put differently, the poet will not use a /s-/ or a /sn-/ word unless there is an appropriate cluster-initial match for it, but the need to refer to sleep and slay overrides the similarity imperatives. I do not know how this interplay between semantic content and alliterative matching can be quantified meaningfully.

272

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

The number of /sw-/-initial alliterating items is very high: 40 glossary headword entries.78 The cluster /sw-/ alliterates as a group in three lifts per line in 18 lines, as in: (31)

Lete aswage or he sware þe swelme of his angirs Swythe swyngis out his swerde and his swayfe feches He swyngis out with a swerd and swappis him to dethe

873 929 1081

Further instances of /sw-/ group alliteration appear at lines 156, 248, 1307, 1355, 2195, 3918, 4098, 4237, 4322, 4405, 4514, 4636, 5126, 5146, 5451. In addition, there are three lines in which the cluster is repeated twice per line: 234, 362, 4241. Only two lines show singleton alliteration for /sw-/: 1141 and 2951. There are no instances where the similarity is based on /sw-/ : /s-/ + vowel +/-w-/, i.e. no OR1 : OVR1 . Concluding the survey of the sibilant-initial clusters, we can say that splitting of these clusters, either by matching /s-/ to another /s-/, or by seeking similarity between the cluster and the same sequence of sounds separated by a vowel, is very rare. It does not occur at all with four of the clusters, and where it does occur, it is lexically motivated or constitutes a negligible proportion of the overall usage of this cluster for alliteration. The next set of clusters whose distribution was also recorded in the WA is the set of stop + sonorant clusters. One of the most widely attested initial clusters in the poet’s vocabulary is the cluster /br-/, found in 87 words and their forms in the text. The cluster /br-/ appears in three lifts per line in 11 lines, for example: (32)

Of bras and of brynt gold and o brit siluir And braydis furth with a brym bere out at þe brade atis A brit brynnand brand he braidis out of shethe

276 496 2764

Further instances of three /br-/ alliterating words per line appear in 1926, 2082, 2259, 2770, 4008, 4093, 4909, 5040. Two other facts about the patterning of the /br-/-initial words should be noted. First, there is a sharp rise of the instances in which the cluster alliterates twice per line: a total of 58 instances.79 This 78. I have not included in the counts the adverb swyth(e) ‘quickly,’ because it consistently falls outside the alliteration. The noun answar(ing)(e) ‘answer’ alliterates on a vowel (for example 2307, 2310, 2637, 3285, 3707, 5425), and is therefore irrelevant, but the verb can alliterate on /sw-/ as in lines 234, 362 and is included in the statistics. 79. The attestations are at lines 427, 462, 510, 783, 897, 906, 925, 965, 1094, 1337, 1343, 1345, 1346, 1397, 1497, 1536, 1539, 1549, 1637, 1642, 1837, 1841, 2024, 2822, 2874, 2997, 3018, 3245, 3325, 3376, 3397, 3423, 3663, 3931, 3970, 4033, 4041, 4129, 4212, 4218, 4359, 4577, 4632, 4868, 4889, 4936, 4964, 5050, 5330, 5371, 5388, 5459, 5470, 5481, 5491, 5665, 5738, 5774.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

273

practice points to an obvious attempt to match the cluster as a group as often as possible. Second, failing the opportunity to pair at least two /br-/ words per line, the poet opts for similarity between /br-/ and /bl-/ (×42), or between /br-/ and /bVr-/. The density of the latter type of matching is quite remarkable: a total of 81 instances. By comparison, singleton alliteration on /b-/ without any other similarities in the onset and the peak, is less frequent, attested in 79 lines. The placement of a /br-/ initial word outside the alliteration happens relatively infrequently, given the large number of available /br-/ words used by the poet, and often involves the verb bring and its forms. Thus, it can be said that the /br-/ cluster shows properties that are shared with the sibilant-initial clusters, but the similarity between /br-/ and other onsets is much more often achieved by splitting the cluster and matching the left edge of the word to the /br-/ as closely as possible. Another very widely represented cluster in this text is /gr-/. It is the initial cluster in 67 main glossary entries. Three alliterating /gr-/ words per line appear in 17 lines, for example: (33)

A growen grape of a grype a grete and a rype For as þe grayne is in þe grape growis þe fruits At þe grete flode of granton now graythis he his tentis

1470 2551 3260

Further examples are found at lines 26, 544, 1118, 1453, 1877, 3252, 3366, 3425, 3472, 3503, 3739, 3884, 5083, 5644. That the cluster is a favored focus of alliteration is clear from the great frequency of lines in which /gr-/ is used twice per line; I counted 92 such lines. The total number of lines in which /gr-/ is matched to itself, 109 times, exceeds the instances of alliteration of /gr-/ with /g-/ which occurs in 62 lines. In another 38 lines /gr-/ is matched either to /gl-/ (×17) or to /gVr-/ (×21), so the similarity extends beyond the leftmost segment. Again, the OR1 : OVR1 /OR2 type of matching must be interpreted as a “second best”: the cluster is no longer cohesive, but both of its parts are copied in the left edge of the matching word. One lexical item that appears with unrelenting regularity in alliterative positions is the adjective grete ‘great, glorious, large’ and its forms; I counted 68 such uses. Quite often these are semantically redundant; they are easy alliterative “fillers”. (34)

þe grete glorius god graythid in þi trone And growis out of þe grete see in graynes and in cragis A grym grisely gome with grete gray lokis

2901 3503 5083

For /kl-/ the results are as follows: 46 words in the text start with that cluster. The incidence of three or more alliterative lifts per line is significant in that it is

274

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

lower than that of the /sp-/ or /sk-/ initial clusters, represented by a comparable number of lexical items. The six lines in which /kl-/ alliterates three or more times are 555, 1501, 2234, 4752, 4990, and 5558. (35)

Cloudis clenely toclefe clatird vnfaire Closid all in clere stele and in clene plates þan vp he clame to a cliffe þat to þe cloudis semed

555 1501 2234

In another forty lines the cluster is used in two lifts per line; clearly the poet is attempting to replicate the /kl-/ as much as possible. However, with this cluster the instances of singleton /kl-/ : /k-/ alliteration are much more frequent: I counted 111 such lines. Although this number includes thirty-four lines in which the split alliteration is on the semantically redundant adverb clene ‘entirely,’ there can be no doubt that the cluster is not overwhelmingly cohesive.80 Alliteration of /kl-/ with /kr-/ appears thirteen times, and alliteration of /kl-/ with /kVl/ is attested seven times. The ratio of straightforward singleton alliteration to /kl-/ : /kVl-/ or /kr-/ alliteration is about 5 : 1. The proportions for /kr-/, represented by thirty-four words in the text, are slightly more in favor of singleton alliteration: forty-one singleton uses, nine cluster alliterations, and a remarkably high rate of /kr-/ : /kl-/ pairings, of which I counted twenty-five instances. There are also twelve instances of /kr-/ : /kVr/ rhymes. The cluster /dr-/ appears in three lifts per line in four lines: (36)

Droe and at þe first drate him dreped for euire þou sall be drechid of a drinke a drate of vnsele Dragons dryfes doun o drit fra þe derfe hillis Quen we ere drinkeles and dry we draw to þe bourne

1191 1229 3996 4806

The rate at which this cluster alliterates with itself twice per line is quite high: I counted thirty lines of this type.81 The same number of lines show /dr-/ :

80. The word appears more than sixty times in the text, often as an alliterative cheville. Examples in which the alliteration is on the adverb clene are: Bees conquirid and ouercomyn clene altogedre Beknew him clene all þe case how þe kyng sayd

174 671

Further split alliteration on clene is found at lines 1023, 1147, 1245, 1327, 1425, etc. 81. The attestations are at lines: 64, 359, 336, 487, 1356, 1431, 1460, 1595, 1903, 1983, 2061, 2141, 2696, 2710, 2859, 2986, 3926, 3929, 3975, 3978, 3991, 4222, 4675, 4919, 5001, 5068, 5249, 5604, 5680, 5704.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

275

/dVr-/ alliteration. Singleton alliteration is twice as frequent: it occurs in 61 lines. The cluster /dr-/ thus occupies an intermediate position in a hierarchy of cohesiveness. The cohesiveness of the corresponding voiceless cluster /tr-/ is even lower. Fifty-four lexical items are available for /tr-/ alliteration. In four lines /tr-/ alliterates as a cluster on three lifts: (37)

þire traitours on þis trechoure trowthis has strakid þe testre trased full of trones with trimballand wingis Qua suld þat trecherous trayne of treson him wirke With tribute and trouage and many tried giftis

3320 5041 5154 5227

In another twenty lines the alliteration is on /tr-/ on two of the lifts.82 Once again, the ratio of cluster-to-singleton alliteration is 2:1 in favor of singleton alliteration. This comparison does not take into account the additional thirteen instances of /tr-/ alliterating with /tVr/, in which the poet avails himself of the intrinsic splittability of the cluster to achieve maximum similarity. Covering every single alliterating cluster is not my goal here. The sample is sufficiently broad to support comparisons between the sibilant-initial clusters and the stop-initial clusters, and in every case the comparison has shown the sibilant clusters to be more cohesive than the stop+sonorant clusters.83 The next set of clusters for which data from WA have been collected are fricative-initial clusters. With /fl-/ the results are as follows: there are fortyfive items eligible for alliteration on /fl-/. Of these, the cluster appears in three

82. The attestations are at lines 123, 543, 110, 1419, 1802, 1894, 2220, 2420, 2523, 2707, 2802, 3115, 3488, 3567, 3847, 5097, 5101, 5357, 5498, 5770. 83. I checked the results for /gl-/. There are twenty-six words that can alliterate on /gl-/. Of these, only one line shows three /gl-/ lifts: And gods glorious gleme glent þam emaunge

4944

In 8 lines (2097, 3393, 3462, 3755, 3925, 4681, 5084, 5630) /gl-/ initial words occupy two lifts per line. There are 11 instances of split alliteration /gl-/ : /g-/ and 8 lines in which the /gl-/ cluster does not participate in the alliteration. The most striking fact about the deployment of the /gl-/ cluster in the Wars is the frequency with which the cluster is matched to /gr-/. Out of the total of 32 lines in which /gl-/ is paired with /gVl-/ or /gr-/, the latter type, /gl-/ : /gr-/ occurs 28 times. What this suggests is that the similarity between these two clusters exceeds the similarity between /gr-/ : /g-/ or the similarity between /gl-/ and /gVl-/. This is an interesting result in that it points to a somewhat different interpretation of cohesiveness. The cluster is perceived as more than the sum of its two separable parts, and it is preferentially matched to another cluster rather than being treated as a sequence of two consonants.

276

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

alliterating lifts per line in a single line where two of the three /fl-/ initial words are editorial: (38)

With þat þe flammand flode f[lasshed] in his een

125684

No other lines show three alliterating /fl-/ per line. There are fifteen lines in which the cluster appears twice in the line. In 62 lines the cluster /fl-/ alliterates simply on /f-/ with no similarity of the segments that follow the fricative, i.e. the proportion of straight /f-/ alliteration to group alliteration is 4 : 1, a ratio not found for any other cluster studied so far. In addition, in 27 lines the cluster /fl-/ is echoed by /fr-/ or by /fVr/, as in: (39)

So with a flote of fresons folowand þi helis Lo þof vs fall now to flee we may na ferryre wend Full many flees may fell bot a fewe waspis

1882 2725 3138

Within the group illustrated in (39) the dominant pattern, for 22 of the 27 instances, the alliteration is /fl-/ : /fVl-/. Another possibly cohesive fricative-initial cluster is /fr-/. Not counting the attestations of the preposition fra, fro, from, there are thirty-two /fr-/ initial head entries in the WA glossary. Three alliterating /fr-/ words appear in line 675 (afrit : freke : afrayd). Alliteration on two /fr-/ words per line occurs in 11 lines: 672, 974, 1040, 1819, 1921, 3965, 4141, 4467, 4765, 4893, 5800. With forty-seven instances of singleton alliteration, /fr-/ : /f-/, the ratio of singleton to cluster alliteration is approximately the same as with /fl-/, 4 : 1. The incidence of split alliteration which relies on a similarity beyond the initial consonant, /fr/ : /fVr-/appears in thirty-two instances. In five lines /fr-/ alliterates with /fl-/. The third fricative-initial cluster investigated here is /␪r-/. Thirty words in the text are eligible for alliteration on that cluster. Eleven lines show full triple alliteration on /␪r-/ as in: (40)

Threschis doun in a thrawe many threuyn dukis To thre dais on a thrawe be threpild togedire And thre thousand of thra men to thraw with engynes

1449 1599 2345

84. The Ashmole MS has femand for flammand and fell for flasshed. The editorial choice though “not an obvious one” relies partially on alliteration on /fl-/, which “is perhaps a guide.” (Duggan and Turville-Petre 1989: 38, 207). The rarity of /fl-/ self-alliteration as compared to the splitting of the cluster would argue against the emendation, however. In view of the alliterative distribution of the other /fl-/ words in the poem, it seems that the emendations may be unnecessary.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

277

The most frequently repeated item is three or its forms.85 Another 13 lines show /␪r-/ in two lifts per line. With 16 attestations, the occurrence of singleton alliteration is below the level of group alliteration. Matching of the cluster to /␪Vr-/ is comparatively rare: it appears only 8 times, which brings the cluster-to-split alliteration ratio to 1 : 1. It seems that the highly cohesive effect for /␪r-/ may be a fortuitous consequence of the fact that the cluster appears in many battle-related words which a careful versifier could easily bundle together in the same line. Some of these words are given in (41); this particular aspect of group alliteration is important because the high level of cohesion for the /␪r-/ cluster appears to reflect a language-specific sound-meaning association, rather than some universal acoustic property of that cluster. (41)

thra ‘bold thra ‘victory’ thraly ‘violently’ thrange ‘crowd’ thraw ‘shoot missiles’ threpis ‘contends’ threshis ‘knocks’

thret ‘threatened’ threuen ‘mighty’ thrillis ‘penetrates’ thringis ‘rushes’ thristis ‘pierces’ throm ‘multitude’ throtild ‘suffocated’

The mutual attraction of these words in a battle narrative is not surprising. More interesting in this case is the overlap between the phonaesthetic properties of these words and their cohesive alliteration, not unlike the concentration of /sl-/ words in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight discussed in Smith (2000: 90–92). This kind of stylistic foregrounding could not have been lost on the audience. Moreover, the additional parameter of cohesive alliteration enriches the notion of “alliterative rank.” Unlike alliterative fillers referred to earlier, where the semantics of the word are of little import, in this case the selection of a particular word from a pool of synonyms, for example thraly ‘violently,’ threuen ‘mighty,’ is the combined consequence of both meaning and phonetic form.

85. As in Lagamon’s Brut the lines in which three is just an alliterative filler raise considerably the rate of cluster alliteration for /␪r-/. Other lines with triple alliteration where three supplies one lift are 554, 2172, 2409, 2386, 2985, 3065, 3198, 3770, 3971, it also supplies a lift in 1369, 1834, 2216, 3198, 5263, etc. The numeral three and its forms appear readily also outside the alliteration, as in 277, 436, 3892, 4053, 4115, 4319, etc.

278

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

The chart below summarizes the findings for The Wars of Alexander: (42) # of Singleton 3 × cluster 2 × cluster OR1 : OR1 : NonCluster words alliteration alliteration alliteration OVR1 OR2 alliterating st sp sk sn sm sl sw

148 52 41 12 9 19 40

0 0 0 0 2 2 2

br gr gl kl kr dr tr

87 67 26 46 34 48 54

79 62 11 111 41 61 50

fl fr ␪r

45 32 29

62 47 1687

4986 29 16 4 7 3 18

0 0 0 0 0 4 3

0 0 0 0 0 4 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

53 63 15 6 3 12 33

11 17 1 6 1 4 4

58 92 8 40 6 30 20

81 21 4 8 12 30 13

42 17 28 13 25 0 0

41 90 8 59 18 57 52

0/1 1 11

15 11 13

22 32 888

5 5 0

24 18 17

Compared to the previous summaries, this chart is more explicit in that it separates the instances of triple versus double cluster alliteration per line. This division is useful in comparing the top and the bottom sets of clusters where the values are reversed, compare /st-, sp-/ to /fl-, fr-/. The shaded figures in the fourth and the fifth columns show that for sibilant-initial clusters triple alliteration is the predominant pattern and instances of splitting are the exception. For stop-initial clusters, cohesive behavior, manifested either by triple or by double alliteration, is very prominent, though instances of singleton alliteration regularly outnumber group alliteration. With fricative-initial clusters, except for /␪r-/, the frequency of cluster alliteration decreases significantly and it is the occurrence of split alliteration that defines the behavior 86. This figure represents only 37 percent of the edited text. 87. This count does not include lines 3471, 3731, 3488 in which third and thirty are used in lines in which the alliteration is on /tr-/. 88. An interesting case of Stab der Liaison appears in 773: Tharmes thrist out of thees banes and shuldres.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

279

Fig. 6.2 Percentage group alliteration in The Wars of Alexander

of the clusters. The chart separates also the instances of OR1 : OVR1 from the instances of OR1 : OR2 .89 The very high frequency of OR1 : OR2 for some clusters is quite noticeable. Alliteration on, for example /sl-/ : ∗ /sr-/, /dr-/ : ∗ /dl-/ is phonotactically impossible. This would force a careful rhymer to search the lexicon more diligently for /sl-, sVl/, /dr -, dVr/ Zusammengesetzte St¨abe, while the options of /br-/ : /bl-/ (×42), /gl-/ : /gr-/ (×28), etc. provide more similarity than straightforward split alliteration. The data on the clusters in WA do not allow a judgement on whether the OR1 : OR2 similarity exceeds OR1 : OVR1 similarity or not; this is an issue which deserves further attention. Overall, the findings support the hypothesis that sibilant-initial clusters are most cohesive, and that some fricative-initial clusters, most notably /fr-, fl-/, show levels closer to the lower end of the scale. Figure 6.2 shows the percentages of cluster alliteration against the total of singleton and cluster alliterative uses in The Wars of Alexander. In this case I have not counted OR1 : OVR1 alliterations. 89. The lack of full reciprocity in the OR1 : OR2 column for /gl-/ : /gr-/ and /kl-/ : /kr-/ comes from the fact that in order to avoid double counting, in some cases one of the clusters is counted in the cluster alliteration column, while the other one is counted in the OR1 : OR2 category. Thus a line such as: Clede him all as a clerke and his croune shauys

121

is counted only as one instance of 2 × cluster alliteration for /kl-/ and one instance of OR1 : OR2 for /kr-/.

280

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

6.4.3 Piers Plowman Our next source of information about the alliterative practices in the second half of the fourteenth century will be William Langland’s masterpiece, Piers Plowman, which exists in several successive states, the A, the B, and the C texts.90 Langland lived between c. 1330 and c. 1400. He is thought to have been born in Worcestershire, and references in the poem suggest that he knew London and Westminster as well as Shropshire, and he may have been a cleric in minor orders in London. The text I have used for my searches here is the B-text, a version of the poem written between 1377 and 1379 (Schmidt 1978: xvi).91 The text consists of a Prologue of 231 lines and twenty passuses, a total of 7,275 lines of verse.92 The most frequent type of alliteration in the text is aa/ax, estimated at 70.3 percent in the B-text; in about 9 percent of the lines the on-verse is “extended” (Schwellvers), having three stressed syllables (Oakden 1930/1968: 168, 171). Thus, alliteration is a prominent and reliable property of the composition.93 As before, in collecting the data I have attempted to avoid metrically uncertain lines as much as possible, ignoring the last lift and discounting instances where the inherent prosodic weight of the alliterating words is in question. 90. A hybrid version, manuscript Bodley 851, has been edited as a fourth version known as The Z Version. For further details on the manuscripts and editions of Piers Plowman the reader is referred to The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive web site, created and maintained by Hoyt Duggan, see http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/piers/. 91. The Vision of Piers Plowman, ed. by A. V. C. Schmidt (1978). The electronic edition in HTML was made available through the Oxford Text Archive, distributed by the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative as part of the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. The citations have been cross-checked in the parallel edition (Schmidt 1995), and where relevant, in the Skeat (1867) edition of the A-text. The modernized spelling of the examples follows the procedures in Schmidt (1978: xxxix): is used for , for <þ>, and are distinguished. 92. The line distribution for the passuses is as follows: I: 209, II: 237, III: 352, IV: 195, V: 642, VI: 330, VII: 201, VIII: 129, IX: 207, X: 473, XI: 439, XII: 295, XIII: 459, XIV: 332, XV: 610, XVI: 275, XVII: 353, XVIII: 434, XIX: 485, XX: 387. This includes the all Latin or macaronic lines in the text; no evidence from these lines has been considered here. 93. One of the alleged formal defects of the text is “impure” alliteration of /s-/ with /ʃ/ (the qualifications are Oakden’s), as in: into sikel or to sithe, to shaar or to kultour – “Certes,’ quod he, “that is sooth,’ and shoop hym for to walken

3.308 11.437

I will not reopen the discussion of this practice here. It is worth repeating, however, that it would constitute a good argument against an assumption that alliteration in Middle English had become a visual device. Further evidence that for Langland and his copyists alliteration was primarily a matter of sound, and not a matter of “first letter”, i.e. not scribal, comes from, for example That is coveitise and unkyndenesse, that quencheth Goddes mercy

17.345

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

281

In Piers Plowman /sp-, st-, sk-/ clusters regularly alliterate with each other: (43)

Spycers speken with hym to spien hire ware Whoso spareth the spryng spilleth hise children. Strook forth sternely and stood bifore hem alle, He myghte neither steppe ne stonde er he his staf hadde, To scorne and to scolde and sclaundre to make, Thanne Scriptare scorned me and a skile tolde Of scornyng and of scoffyng and of unskilful berynge;

2.226 5.040 P.183 5.346 2.082 11.001 13.276

The evidence for /sp-, st-, sk-/ cluster alliteration is very robust. A complete search of the B-text for /sp-/ alliterations shows that out of 38 attestations, 32 are completely regular. The lines that look exceptional are most certainly due to the unavailability of appropriate lexical items, so for /sp-/ cluster alliteration is in fact attested in 31 out of the 32 total instances.94 The lines cited in (44) comprise the complete set of lines in which the B-text shows deviations from the standard practice of /sp-, st-, sk-/ alliteration: (44)

Ayein swiche Salomon speketh, and despiseth hir wittes, And in stede of stywardes sitten and demen Thanne Symonye and Cyvylle stonden forth bothe Than he that gooth with two staves, to sighte of us alle. “That is in extremis,’ quod Scripture,” amonges Sarsens and Jewes And so may Sarsens be saved, scribes and Jewes. “And sith that thise Sarsens, scribes and Jewes “Ac pharisees and sarsens, scribes and Jewes “By this skile,’ he seide, I se an evidence

15.54 P.96 2.072 17.039 10.344 15.388 15.499 15.603 17.197

94. The regular alliteration appears in the cited lines and in lines P.52, 1.149, 3.171, 3.272, 3.310, 5.041, 5.147, 5.212, 5.434, 7.46, 9.98, 9.101, 10.40, 10.102, 14.197, 15.36, 15.143, 15.275, 15.609, 17.01, 17.34, 17.83, 18.12, 18.86, 18.261, 19.304, 19.342, 19.405, 20.055. Five apparent violations involve Spiritus: Spiritus Prudencie the firste seed highte; The seconde seed highte Spiritus Temperancie. The thridde seed that Piers sew was Spiritus Fortitudinis; The ferthe seed that Piers sew was Spiritus Iusticie, So that he sewe and save Spiritus Temperancie.

19.278 19.283 19.291 19.299 20.22

The unexpected alliteration is clearly forced by the need to repeat the word Spiritus in the numbered list in which it appears. This case is parallel to the forced non-cohesive use of other items when the discourse requires them, for example brother in Lagamon’s Brut (6.3.2) and sleep, slay in WA (6.4.2). In contrast to the use of alliterative “fillers” which are semantically redundant, the evidence that such items produce should be attributed to the need to communicate a particular semantic content; the choice is lexical and of little phonological significance.

282

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

In the one seemingly aberrant line involving /sp-/, 15.54, the alliteration pattern may be aab/bx, which would bring up the conformity to the /sp-/ cluster alliteration to 100 percent, counting two occurrences of a cluster per line as relevant. Similarly, in lines P.96 and 2.072 the alliteration may be aa/bx, which leaves only a single exception to /st-/ cluster matching, line 17.039, which is alliteratively irregular and additionally suggests assonance in staves : alle.95 With /sk-/ the situation is different: the cluster alliterates with itself nine times (2.082, 3.057, 10.298, 10.301, 10.329, 11.001, 11.107, 13.276, 19.286), but, as shown in (44), it is also matched to /s-/ in 10.344, 15.388, 15.499, 15.603. Again, it can be assumed that restricted lexical choice is responsible for the non-cluster matching in lines containing scripture, scribes. If we count these as a single item – note the clustering of instances in passus 15, the conformity to cluster alliteration rises to 82 percent. The evidence for cluster alliteration of other complex onsets is informative in terms of the hierarchy of cohesiveness. The complete set of relevant lines where the alliterating clusters are /sn-, sm-/ is cited in (45): (45)

And what smyth that any smytheth be smyte therwith to dethe! Ther smyt no thyng so smerte, ne smelleth so foule And whan smoke and smolder smyt in his sighte, For smoke and smolder smerteth hise eighen “Ac the smoke and the smolder that smyt in oure eighen, That were bisnewed with snow, and snakes withinne,

3.324 11.434 17.324 17.326 17.344 15.112

With the possible exception of one line, P.145,96 where the noun phrase smale mees ‘small mice’ would be right-prominent, making smale less likely to alliterate, all /sm-/ and /sn-/ initial words in the text alliterate as clusters. This is remarkable consistency compared to the results obtained from alliteration on other clusters. Before I proceed further with the survey of the alliterative patterns, some methodological clarifications are in order. Here, and throughout this poem, I have not considered the second lift in the b-verse as relevant, ignoring the 95. Another difficulty in quantifying self-alliteration comes from cohesive use across lineboundaries, but not within the same line, for example: “Two stokkes ther stondeth. ac stynte th[ow] noght there: Thei highte “Stele-noght” and “Sle-noght” – strik forth by bothe

5.576 5.577

I have not counted line 5.577 as an exception to the pattern of cohesive /st-/ alliteration. 96. And smale mees myd hem: mo than a thousand

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

283

possibility of aa/bb alliteration when aa is a cluster and bb is the same cluster alliterating on the left edge. Thus the b-verse smyt in his sighte in line 17.324 in (45), and sliken hise sydes in 2.099 in (47) below are not counted as evidence against cluster alliteration because of the /sm-/ : /sm-/ and /sl-/ : /sl-/ patterns in the respective a-verses. In any case, the pattern aa/bb is rare in Piers Plowman, amounting to about 1.5 percent of the lines.97 Following the same principle, when a cluster appears only in the second lift of the b-verse, it will not be counted as constituting a violation of cluster alliteration, for example: (46)

Thei ben acombred with coveitise, thei konne noght out crepe

1.196.

The next /s-/ cluster, /sl-/, can alliterate as a unit, as shown in (47): (47)

Til Sleuthe and sleep sliken hise sides Thanne cam Sleuthe al bislabered, with two slymy eighen. The whiche is sleuthe, so slow that may no sleightes helpe it

2.099 5.386 13.407

Further examples of cluster alliteration on /sl-/ in the text are found at P.10, P.45, 20.163, 20.217. The consistency of /sl-/ group alliteration in these seven lines appears compromised at first sight because in twenty-two instances /sl-/ alliterates with /s-/ or even /ʃ-/ as in (48): (48)

And most sotil of song other sleyest of hondes, For shrift of mouthe sleeth synne be it never so dedlyAc satisfaccion seketh out the roote, and bothe sleeth and voideth, Ech man subtileth a sleighte synne to hide,

13.297 14.090 14.094 19.460

It should be noted that the twenty-two instances of /sl-/ singleton alliteration are based on just three words: sleep (13×), sloth (6×), and slay (3×).98 In addition to the inherent cohesiveness of the cluster and the relatively small size of the lexical pool, the concentration of instances of /sl-/ : /s-/ alliteration 97. The small number of aa/bb lines in which the a and b alliteration falls on different consonants do of course constitute evidence for or against cluster alliteration. Thus in line 5.469: Ne nevere wene to wynne with craft that I knowe

5.469

The /kr-/ : /k/ alliteration in the b-verse is clearly structurally central and therefore it will be counted as an instance of non-cohesive use of /kr-/. 98. The word slay appears in 3.287, 5.577, 10.365, sleep in P.231, 1.005, 2.097, 5.004, 5.361, 5.376, 7.145, 11.265, 11.320, 14.002, 14.068, 17.323, 18.299, and sloth in 5.435, 5.449, 14.253, 20.159, 20.217, 20.374. Langland uses only 9 /sl-/ initial words, though the MED lists 259 headwords and 312 headwords and forms with that onset.

284

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

on three words provides the third dimension to the description of unit alliteration: the semantic and stylistic value of a particular word. Thus in Piers Plowman the need to refer to sloth and sleeping overrides the phonologically motivated preference to keep the cluster together, especially in Passuses 5 and 20. This is a very clear parallel to the use of sleep and slay and their forms discussed in 6.5. Keeping these two words out of the picture, but counting somewhat arbitrarily sloth, brings the occurrence of /sl-/ unit alliteration to 54 percent. However, because it is largely a matter of subject-specific lexical choice, this low figure does not argue against the cohesiveness of the /sl-/ cluster.99 Alliteration on /sw-/ is hard to quantify because of the uncertainties surrounding the vocalization of the approximant in that cluster. A cursory check shows that the ratio of cluster-to-singleton alliteration is approximately 1 : 3. The <-sw-> in swich ‘such’ is definitely not a cluster in Langland’s dialect. The evidence for that word is that wherever swich partakes in the alliteration, it alliterates exclusively on /s-/: P.32, 3.088. 3.134, 7.040, 9.122, 10.026, 10.107, 10.202, etc. In what follows, I will no longer refer to the data on /sw-/ because of the instability of the cluster.100 Going back over the results for /s-/ initial clusters at this point: /sl-/ is the least likely cluster to alliterate with itself, followed by /sk-/. The cohesive behavior of sibilant + stop clusters approaches 100 percent. In the earlier texts examined in this chapter we found that with stop-sonorant clusters, /tr-, dr-, kr-, gr-/, the use of cluster alliteration is lower than that recorded for the /s-/-initial clusters. Piers Plowman is a lengthy composition and counting every instance of every single cluster in the poem would be superfluous, so in the survey below I present the results of searches for group alliteration only for some stop-sonorant clusters. The clusters whose alliterative distribution was counted are /pr-, br-, kr-, gr-, kl-, gl-/.

99. Once again I want to make it clear that this is not identical to the concept of “alliterative rank,” which refers strictly to the preference for one particular member of a synonymic group for the purposes of alliteration. That notion was explored by Brink (1920), Borroff (1962), Turville-Petre (1977), Cronan (1986), and Lester (1996). The choice of alliterating items can be motivated by a combination of factors, therefore analyses of the behavior of synonyms with respect to alliteration will profit from incorporating the phonological information on cluster cohesion and references to the availability of appropriate lexical items sharing their onset properties. 100. The MED’s practice for all words beginning with <sw-> is to record all variant forms except those beginning with <su->; forms with <su-> are given only when there are no examples of the same forms with <sw->. The spellings <sw-, su-> are also frequently used in variant forms of words beginning with <squ->, which makes searches and comparisons unreliable.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

285

The first cluster, /pr-/, presents some idiosyncratic problems. It appears at the left edge of the prefix pro- where it can alliterate either on /pr/ or as a cluster: (49)

And that is the profession apertly that apendeth to knyghtes “And late apparaille thise provisours in palfreyes wise Provysour or preest, or penaunt for hise synnes

1.100 2.171 4.133

For the Prologue and the first six passuses three lifts on /pr-/ appear in just two lines: at 4.122 (prechours : prechynge : preved) and 5.041 (preide : prelates : preestes). Much more common is the pattern of alliteration with two out of the three alliterating lifts starting with the same cluster as in (50): (50)

She is pryvee with the Pope–provisours it knoweth, Ne to deprave thi persone with a proud herte. Preestes that prechen the peple to goode And though povere men profre yow presentes and yiftes,

3.147 3.179 3.223 6.041

My sample contains a total of 24 instances of two cluster-alliterating lifts.101 For comparison, a single /pr-/ lift in the line appears 59 times.102 This puts the cluster alliteration for /pr-/ at 29 percent. This is a high proportion, but it should be noted that many of the lines involve instances of pray and priest, whose semantic and syntactic compatibility increases significantly the chances of double alliteration. For /br-/ a search of the Prologue and the first ten passuses show 72 instances of single alliteration, 10 instances of two /br-/ lifts, but no instances of three lifts filled by the same onset, i.e. about 12 percent of cluster alliteration. The cluster /br-/ occurs initially extremely often in the ME lexicon: 460 headwords and 545 headwords and forms recorded in the MED. The only other cluster which appears with comparable frequency is /gr-/, with 476 headwords and 554 headwords and forms. Quite often the alliteration attests to the intuition of 101. Repetition of /pr-/ onsets appear in lines P38, P59, P68, P90, 1.080, 2.080, 3.150, 3.234, 4.095, 4.133, 5.042, 5.104, 5.143, 5. 158, 5.165, 5.169, 5.198, 5.611, 6.169, 6.295. I have not counted lines in which similarity may be based on the splitting of the cluster, i.e. /pVr-/ as in And somme putten hem to pride, apparailed hem therafter, For the parisshe preest and the pardoner parten the silver Persons and parisshe preestes pleyned hem to the bisshop

P.23 P.81 P.83

102. The attestations are in lines P.23, P.25, P.81, P.83, P.108, P.119, P.173, 1.100, 1.127, 2.023, 2.171, 2.178, 2.190, 2.205, 2.215, 3.066, 3.082, 3.089, 3.137, 3.162, 3.252, 4.064, 4.098, 5.013, 5.015, 5.023, 5.026, 5.050, 5.062, 5.155, 5.209, 5.252, 5.313, 5.395, 5.399, 5.416, 5.544, 5.551, 5.556, 5.593, 5.598, 6.024, 6.037, 6.039, 6.108, 6.123, 6.125, 6.149, 6.153, 6.179, 6.197, 6.199, 6.202, 6.253, 6.275.

1.152, 3.311, 5.327, 6.112,

286

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

the poet regarding the greater closeness of /br-/ to /bVr-/ or /bl-/ than to any other /b-/ initial syllable, as in the following examples: (51)

That broughte hire to boure with blisse and with joye. “Barons and burgeises she bryngeth in sorwe,

3.103 3.163

Such variations on the notion of onset similarity in Piers Plowman are difficult to quantify because the size of the text would make the search prohibitively time-consuming. Moreover, it is unlikely that the findings will be more illuminating than the corresponding findings in Wynnere and Wastoure and The Wars of Alexander. Instead, in Piers Plowman I have sought to establish the ratio of full onset alliteration to alliteration on just the initial stop. As in the previous texts, the hypothesis which those data can confirm or disconfirm is that more cohesive clusters will tend to be chosen for group alliteration at a higher rate. The cluster /kr-/ appears in a rather broad array of lexical items. This is not surprising, given the frequency of /kr-/ initial words in the language. The MED search shows 415 headwords, and 490 headwords and forms with . In Piers Plowman the most frequent of the items is Crist/Cristen ‘Christ/Christian.’103 The chances of double alliteration, and even triple alliteration, are considerable. (52)

That han cure under Crist, and crownynge in tokene To cracchen us and al oure kynde, though we cropen under benches Sholde no Cristene creature cryen at the yate

P.88 P.186 9.080

In the Prologue and the first six passuses there are 55 lines where /kr-/ onsets appear in alliterating positions.104 Of these 10, or 18 percent, appear twice or three times per line. For /gr-/ the ratio of cluster alliteration is quite high: 33 instances out of a total of 88 cases in the Prologue and the first ten passuses, or 37.5 percent. However, the picture is somewhat distorted by two factors. First, as mentioned above, the overall pool of /gr-/ words in the language is the largest one among 103. Out of the 55 lines with /kr-/ alliteration in the sample for this search, 23 use the root Crist for alliteration: 5 in lines with double alliteration and 18 with single alliteration. I found another 16 /kr-/ initial items used in the poem: craccen, craft, crafty, craved, creature, crede, creme, crepe, croft, cropen, cropped, cros, crowne, crowninge, cruddes, cryden. 104. An interesting case of possibly alliterating unstressed syllable onset is provided by line 6.005: Hadde I cryed this half acre and sowen it after. Though the /kr-/ echo is certainly present in the line, I have not included this line in my counts because elsewhere acre alliterates on a vowel.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

287

the words with obstruent-initial cluster onsets in Middle English, with 476 headwords and 554 headwords and forms. Second, in the data I collected, the frequency of words such as grace, great, grant is very high – the easy deployment of these words swells the number of lines showing cluster alliteration. (53)

My fader the grete God is and ground of alle graces, And of his grete grace graunted hym blisse –

2.029 9.047

Counting all attestations in the Prologue and the first ten passuses, the numbers for the cluster /gl-/ are as follows: out of a total of 31 lines, only five (5.319, 5.340, 9.061, 10.083, 10.156) have two /gl-/ alliterating lifts. This comprises 16 percent of the usage. There are 15 /gl-/ words in the sample, the most frequent of which is gloton ‘glutton’ in Passus V.105 For /kl-/ the Prologue and the first six passuses show 43 instances of a single /kl-/ word alliterating in /k-/. There are, however, 7 instances106 of two lifts in the line alliterating in /kl-/; cluster alliteration occurs in 14 percent of the cases. Clusters of stop + approximant show the following distribution. For /tw-/ except for a single non-alliterating twyne ‘entwine’ at line 17.206, the only initial words used in the text are cognates of two: bitwene, twelve, twenty, tweyne, twies; none of these words alliterate among themselves. As for the determiner two, it should be discounted altogether because in the majority of cases it is obviously weakly stressed, and has probably lost the /-w-/ already. Spellings with and are very widely attested in LALME, maps 550, 557. For /kw-/ the results are of less interest because of the paucity of English /kw-/ words that Langland uses. The frequency of parenthetical and unalliterating quod ‘said’ + pronoun is overwhelming. Only a handful of other items: quake, queed ‘evil one,’ quene ‘queen,’ queynt, quash, quenche, questions, quyk, quite/quiteth ‘requite’ appear in the text. Scanning the entire text, I found that group alliteration appears in lines 13.010, 14.189, 18.248, 18.347, while the other instances in the text alliterate on /k-/. Note, however, that line 13.010 is embedded in /k-/ alliteration, and the method of using identical alliteration in consecutive lines is one of the features of the alliterative compositions of the fourteenth century. Thus, cluster alliteration and /kw-/ : /k-/ alliteration are evenly balanced in the text. All relevant examples in the text are cited in (54): 105. The MED has 233 headword entries and 258 headword and form entries with /gl-/. 106. The attestations are in lines P.154, 3.034, 4.119, 5.312, 5.320, 6.059, 6.304.

288 (54)

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME And no corps in hir kirkyerd ne in hir kirk was buryed But quik he biquethe hem aught or sholde helpe quyte hir dettes; And how this coveitise overcom clerkes and preestes; We sholde take the acquitaunce as quyk and to the queed shewen it “The whiles I quykne the cors,’ quod he, “called am I Anima; Quaked as quyk thyng and al biquasshed the roche. And bothe quyke and quyte that queynt was thorugh synne; And tho was he conquerour called of quyke and of dede.

13.009 13.010 14.188 14.189 15.023 18.248 18.347 19.053

With /dw-/ the only item eligible for alliteration in the text is the root dwell, and its inflexional forms and derivatives. No interesting information can be derived from that word, but it is still worth noticing that the repeated punning on dwell – do-well- do-evil in the text is good evidence for the intuitive non-cohesiveness of that cluster: (55)

And Dowel and Do-yvele, wher thei dwelle bothe.’ And Dowel and Do-yvele mowe noght dwelle togideres. Where that Dowel dwelleth, and do me to knowe.’ “Sire Dowel dwelleth,’ quod Wit, “noght a day hennes

8.017 8.024 8.078 9.001

The practice with respect to clusters of non-sibilant fricative + sonorant, /fr-, fl-, ␪r-/, is similar to that in The Wars of Alexander. With the cluster /fr-/ the findings are as follows: the Prologue and the first ten passuses show a total of 49 lines in which /fr-/ initial words alliterate. This high density of /fr-/ initial alliterating words is to be expected in view of the overall frequency of /fr-/ words in the ME lexicon: 362 headwords and 404 headwords and forms with /fr-/ are recorded in the MED. However, in this large sample only the lines cited in (56) are instances of cluster alliteration. (56)

For to be youre frend, frere, and faile yow nevere Of a freres frokke were the foresleves. But if it be fressh flessh outher fissh fryed outher ybake “And thanne freres in hir fraytour shul fynden a keye

3.052 5.080 6.310 10.320

With 17 items, the pool of lexical items from which /fr-/ alliteration can be drawn is quite rich and diverse.107 This is comparable to, and even marginally better than, the numbers found elsewhere, for example with /gl-/, /kr-/. However, the ratio of self-alliteration for this cluster is about half of that for /gl-/, /kr-/: only 7.5 percent of the lines in this large sample show cluster alliteration. On the other hand, /fr-/ appears to be readily and even deliberately matched to /fVr-/: 107. The eligible items in the text are frayned ‘asked,’ fraytour ‘refectory,’ free, freke ‘man,’ frele ‘frail,’ freletee ‘frailty,’ frend, Frenssh, frere ‘friar,’ fresshe ‘fresh,’ frete ‘eat,’ fretted ‘adorned,’ Friday, frokke ‘frock,’ fruyt ‘fruit,’ fryed ‘fried,’ frythed ‘hedged.’

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century (57)

I fond there freres, alle the foure ordres Thanne I frayned hire faire, for Hym that hire made Freres with fair speche fetten hymthen, Of a freres frokke were the foresleves. I frayned hym first fram whennes he come

289

P.58 1.058 2.230 5.080 16.174

The cluster /fl-/ occurs frequently in initial position in the ambient language: the MED records 320 headwords and 351 headwords and forms on /fl-/. The pool of eligible lexical items in PP is quite generous, with 26 different items available for alliteration.108 To track the distribution of /fl-/ words, I scanned the Prologue and the first 15 passuses, from where the following examples are taken: (58)

Alle fledden for fere and flowen into hernes; Of thi flour and of thi flesshe – fecche whanne us liketh, And feblest fowel of flight is that fleeth or swymmeth. And out of the flynt sprong the flood that folk and beestes dronken;

2.234 6.157 12.239 14.064

A total of seven lines show /fl-/ more than once per line, the lines cited and lines 6.184, 12.168, 15.035. In spite of the apparent richness of lexical choices, cluster alliteration on /fl-/ is not very prominent. It represents only 11 percent of the total 61 instances of alliterating /fl-/ words. There are numerous instances of /fl/ matched to /fVl-/, for example at lines 1.040 (flessh : folwen), 2.147 (Fals-witnesse : floryns), 2.211 (Falsnesse : fleigh), 12.168 (felawe : fleteth: flood), etc. The results on are as follows: 16 words in the text are potential candidates for alliteration: thraldom, thralles, thredbare, three, thresshe, thresshfold, thretynge, threve, threw, thridde, (also thritty, thritti), thrittene, thritty, thriveth, (also thryveth) throte, [thr]umbled, thrungen. Of these, words appear in more than one lift per line five times, in the examples below and in 10.209, 5.497:109 108. flailes, flappes, flapten, flaterere (also flatereres), flatte, Flaundres, flawme ‘flegm,’ fle, (also fledden), fleckede, fleigh (also fleen, fleynge), flessh, fleteth, flex ‘flax,’ flicche ‘side of bacon,’ flight, flittynge, flobre ‘sully,’ flodes, floor, florissheth, floryns, flour ‘flour,’ floures ‘flowers,’ flowen, flux ‘discharge,’ flynt. 109. The line “The thridde day therafter Thow yedest in oure sute:

5.497

presents a special case because double alliteration of /␪r-/ here implies a syncopated form of therafter. This is more likely than assuming alliteration between /d-/ in day and /ð-/ in thou. Mixed alliteration /d/ : /ð/ is not found anywhere else in the ME alliterative corpus – no such “unvollkommene oder fragliche Reime” are mentioned in Schumacher’s most exhaustive survey of the texts (1914: 94–162).

290 (59)

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME He [thr]umbled on the thresshfold and threw to the erthe.110 A thousand and thre hundred, twies thritty and ten, Ac I have thoughtes a threve af thise thre piles –

5.351 13.269 16.055

Langland seems reluctant to include /␪r-/ words in his alliterating scheme. Scanning the entire poem, in addition to the lines cited in (59), I found only five more cases of a /␪r-/ word placed in an alliterating position.111 The ratio of cluster to first consonant alliteration is 5 : 5, an even split. There are no /␪w-/ words in the text. The last attestations of words, according to the MED are: thweal (n.) ‘ablution,’ c. 1150, thw¯en (v.) ‘to wash, to cleanse,’ c. 1175, thwert-out (adv.) ‘wholly,’ c. 1225, thwert-over (adj.) ‘crosswise,’ rarely used, last entry c. 1500, thw¯ıre (adj.) ‘obstinate, wicked,’ c. 1150, thwirli (adj.) ‘wicked’ 1175, thwirnisse (n.) ‘perversity, affliction,’ c. 1150. Excluding clusters whose second element is the approximant /w/ for the reasons given above, the results for the historically stable clusters in Piers Plowman, B-text, are summarized below. For this text I calculated the ratios of cluster alliteration measured as a percentage of the overall occurrences of the cluster in alliterating positions. (60)

Cluster

%

Cluster

%

Cluster

%

sp st sm sn sk sl

100 100 100 100 82 54

gr pr kr gl kl br

37.5 29 18 16 14 12.2

␪r fl fr

50 11 7.5

The first column lists sibilant-initial, the second, stop-initial, and the third, fricative-initial clusters. For /sk-/ in the first column the numbers are low and the results inconclusive; the high incidence of /sl-/ : /s-/ was possibly influenced by Lass (1991–1993: 41) argues that as early as Old English initial voiced fricatives can be reconstructed outside East Mercian and Northumbrian. Even if this is the case, the absence of alliterative matching of /d-/ and /ð-/ elsewhere makes speculations about the voicing of the fricative in in Langland’s language vacuous. For a more general discussion of the chronology and evidence for the voicing of in function words see Minkova and Stockwell (1997b: 44–46). 110. Some manuscripts have rather than <þru->. As noted above, the spelling is editorial for the scribal <þ>, following Schmidt’s practice (1978: xxxix). 111. The attestations are in lines 5.277, 5.510, 8.115, 16.131, 20.011. In lines 13.269, 16.055 the numeral three is unstressed and is outside the structurally necessary alliteration.

6.4 Cluster alliteration in the fourteenth century

291

Fig. 6.3 Cluster alliteration in Piers Plowman

the content-driven frequency of sloth and sleep. On the whole, the first column confirms the hypothesis that the perceptual break in sibilant-initial clusters is likely to come after the cluster – this is truer of sibilant + stop clusters than for /sl-/. The second and third columns show a mixed picture, with /fl-/ and /fr-/ exhibiting the lowest levels of cohesiveness. As in the previous texts, /␪r-/ is more likely to alliterate as a unit than the other non-sibilant fricative-initial and the stop-initial clusters. Figure 6.3 shows the percentages of cluster alliteration in Piers Plowman plotted as a bar graph. Leaving Piers Plowman, we can say that the alliterative patterning with respect to clusters confirms the differences in cluster cohesiveness found elsewhere. Even a metrically relatively imperfect text such as Piers Plowman can be illuminating as to which clusters are most likely to be chosen for repetition in the line: /sp-, st-, sm-, sn-/, and which would be least favored as a cluster: /fr-, fl-/. The four texts investigated in this chapter were chosen because they cover a wide chronological range, they differ in metrical regularity, they exist in machine-readable form, and the printed versions come with extensive editorial annotation. Conducting a more comprehensive search is becoming a more tractable task with more and more material available in digital form. A sampling of three other texts, Alexander and Dindimus,112 The Parlement of the 112. Alexander and Dindimus, also known as Alexander B, an alliterative poem of 1,140 lines, composed in the West Midlands and dating between c. 1340 and 1370, is a translation from Latin (Skeat 1878/1973: xx–xxi). Except for The Destruction of Troy, for which the pattern reaches 99.9 percent, Alexander B is the poem in the ME alliterative corpus for which the aa/ax pattern of alliteration is highest, at 96 percent.

292

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

Thre Ages,113 and The Siege of Jerusalem114 revealed tendencies similar to the results in the searched texts. In all of these texts /sp-, st-/ initial clusters are kept together, while stop-initial and fricative-initial clusters are readily divided. A more explicit statistical picture for the entire alliterative corpus is not only extremely hard to put together due to textual problems and editorial disagreements, but it would probably be unnecessarily repetitious. The sample is sufficiently large to allow the formulation of a hypothesis which can subsequently be tested against more data from English and other languages. 6.5

Why is fourteenth-century verse good evidence for cluster cohesion?

Before I proceed with the non-alliterative evidence for cluster cohesion in English, I would like to address briefly the question of the title of this section. The arguments for choosing the fourteenth-century alliterative material as reliable evidence come from the high frequency of cluster cohesion in the chosen texts, the non-random nature of its distribution, and, again, the acoustic nature of the phenomenon. Since cluster alliteration occurred in Old English too, collecting similar data from Anglo-Saxon verse would in principle be possible. As observed in 6.2, however, it was only in Middle English that the esthetic desirability of cluster alliteration became a recognizable attribute of versification. The concentration of cluster alliteration in the fourteenth-century compositions thus produces a relatively large basis for testing the linguistic hypotheses relating to cluster cohesion. Such information can, of course, be gleaned also from some later alliterative compositions; this is a task easily undertaken once we have 113. Warren Ginsberg (ed.). Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. Originally published in Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992. I have used both the Offord edition (EETS 1959, repr. 1967) and the online text available at http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/ginparl.htm. The text does not allow a dating more definite than between 1352–1353 and about 1390. Offord thinks it probable that the poem was composed before 1370, but acknowledges this as supposition. 114. The text is considered one of the technically most accomplished alliterative compositions of the latter half of the fourteenth century, dated c. 1390–c. 1400, see Duggan and Turville-Petre (1989: xviii). The search was much facilitated by the availability of the machine-readable version of the text created by Hoyt Duggan and accessible through the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library. All citations were compared to the printed edition of The Siege of Jerusalem, edited by E. Kolbing and Mabel Day, Early English Text Society, Original series 188. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.

6.5 Fourteenth-century verse and cluster cohesion

293

worked out the methodology of data collection on this particular alliterative feature.115 The empirical information collected in the previous sections shows that Middle English cluster alliteration is not randomly distributed. Alliterative choices depend demonstrably on the phonetic nature of the adjacent consonants, which in their turn motivate the presence or absence of a perceptual break within an onset cluster. The poet’s desire to maximize the identity of stressed onsets is discernible in the use of semantically weak alliterative fillers such as grete ‘great,’ clene ‘entirely.’ Another possible influence on the choice of alliterating partners may be the “alliterative rank” of a particular lexical item, a notion which must be extended to cover both synonymy and alliterative compatibility. The narrow focus on words with initial clusters makes it impossible to determine the exact role of this factor; still, we have found that at times the availability of semantically related words with identical clusters may affect the frequency of cluster alliteration. This was especially clear in the case of battle-related words in WA: thraly ‘violently,’ thrange ‘crowd,’ thraw ‘shot missiles,’ threshis ‘knocks,’ thret ‘threatened,’ thrillis ‘penetrates,’ thringis ‘rushes,’ throtild ‘suffocated,’ etc., or sleep and sloth, or pray, preach, and priest in PP. These are not quantifiable parameters; though they can tilt the numbers in some directions; on the whole they do not seem to interfere or dramatically change the tendencies established by the cluster identity counts in our texts. In English historical phonology alliterative evidence has always been taken with a grain of salt because of the possibility of it being based on letter identity. My position throughout this book has been that alliteration cannot be assumed to be “eye rhyme” either in Old or in Middle English. The continuity and strength of sound-based, rather than letter-based alliteration is substantiated by pairings such as the ones cited in (61):116

115. The Alliterative Morte Arthure has already been mentioned in this connection. Dunbar (c. 1460–1513) in The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo is also careful with the alliterative matching. Death and Life and The Scottish Field, the latter dated c. 1515, are shorter and metrically inconsistent. 116. A potential problem may arise from the assumption that /ks/ spelled <x> may alliterate with /s-/, which would be neither phonetically nor orthographically justified. Schumacher (1914: 119) shows convincingly that <x> should not be interpreted as /ks/; it is in fact a simple /s/. His supporting evidence comes from pairings such as disseuert : Cite : Xanthus, suster : Exonia : seruage, assignet : soueran : Xantipus in The Destruction of Troy and similar rhymes elsewhere. This is another indication that alliteration depended on die feinere Empf¨anglichkeit des Ohrs “the refined receptivity of the ear”; a phrase used with reference to Lagamon’s sound-based alliteration by Brandst¨adter (1912: 27).

294

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

(61) /ʃ-/ : /ʃ-/ /k-/ : /k-/ /k-/ : /k-/ /k-/ : /k-/ /f-/ : /f-/ /s-/ : /s-/ /w-/: /w-/

: <sch> : : : : <s> : <w> :

chepe ‘sheep’: scholdirs ‘shoulders’ casten ‘cast’: quarters ‘quarters’ kiddes ‘goats’: clouen ‘split’ kiddes ‘goats’: quarterd ‘quartered’ phisik ‘remedy’: fode ‘food’ softely ‘softly: cite ‘city’ wantis ‘lacks’: quele ‘wheel’

(W & W 481) (W & W 70) (W & W 340) (W & W 340) (PP 6.269) (WA 698) (WA 1980)

Arguably, the extension of the practice of cluster alliteration itself fits better an assumption of an auditory-based creation of the verse line; the recording and copying of the text were subordinate processes. 6.6

Non-verse evidence for cluster cohesion

Inferences about cluster cohesion so far have been based on the premise that the poets’ choices of alliterating pairs correspond to the degree of similarity between onset clusters. Quantitatively, alliterative poetry provides the largest bulk of data available on cluster behavior in Middle English. In a system with uncodified spelling rules, however, alternative scribal forms can also be informative. The logic behind using alternate cohesive/split spellings is the following: if a cluster is fully cohesive, it should not be subject to spelling variation. If, on the other hand, the juncture between the first and the second consonant can be interpreted as similar to a perceptual break, the resulting ambiguity may trigger spelling variation. (62) shows a sample of some scribal variants of cluster-initial words found in the Middle English Dictionary in which the cluster is split by scribal epenthesis. (62)

borohte ‘brought’ dowelle ‘dwell’ furment ‘grain’ < OF, L frument gernet(e) ‘pomegrante’ OF grenade gerner ‘storeroom’ < OF grenier

pulk(e) ‘pluck’ sowere ‘swear’ thursch ‘thrush,’ OE þrysce tharl ‘thrall,’ OE þræl werangus ‘wrongs’

Whether the spellings represent genuine doublet forms or not is impossible to decide when the epenthesized scribal forms have not survived in the standard language. Still, the evidence cannot be dismissed; tentative as it may be, it conspicuously excludes /sp-, st-, sk-/.117 Moreover, the probability of alternative realizations is enhanced by the mirror image of the phenomenon in (62), namely 117. On this point, I am relying on the judgement of the MED editors, who mark the extremely rare single split spellings of these clusters as “errors.” I have identified a total of six such “errors”: <sepit> for <spit>, <sepere> for <speren>, <sipirit> for <spirit>, <sepelle> for <spellen>, <sytyh> for <stig(e)> ‘rise,’ <sitne> for <stone>.

6.6 Non-verse evidence for cluster cohesion

295

a “syncopated” spelling of the sequence of etymological initial obstruent (other than /s-/) + vowel + sonorant sequence: (63)

crate ‘carat’ croub ‘raven,’ OF corb crub for curb ‘restraint’ crunle ‘kernel’ flette for fillet ‘ribbon’ frist ‘first’, OE fyrst frith ‘fiord, firth’ frubischer ‘furbisher’

glit ‘gilt, gilded’ glowpyd, glupped, igloupet ‘gulped’ gridel ‘girdle,’ OE gyrdel grost ‘gorse,’ OE gorst, gors thref(te) for therfe ‘unleavened,’ OE þeorf thrist(e) ‘thirst,’ OE þyrst thrus(se) for thurs(e) ‘demon,’ OE þyrs

No examples comparable to the ones cited in (63) exist with /sp-, st-, sk-/. This combination of scribal epenthesis and syncope corroborates an assumption that the scribes were interpreting an obstruent–sonorant sequence as similar to an obstruent–vowel sequence. The data in (62)–(63) represent, admittedly, “occasional” spellings. They cannot be dismissed as irrelevant, however, because such spellings are fully paralleled by the history of some more familiar historical doublets based on the similarity between non-sibilant obstruents followed by a sonorant and the same sequence with an epenthetic vowel inserted between the obstruent and the sonorant: (64)

burn – brand garner – granary garnet – grenade garston120 – grass gulch – glutch

(H)un-ferð – Gott-fried118 purty – pretty119 third, thirty – three thorough – through work – wrought

Further examples of words whose etymology is based on the same range of options that the purely scribal variation allows are cited in (65):121 (65)

O1 R2 V < O1 VR2 bright < OE beorht flimsy < filmsy fright < OE fyrhto, cf. fear (nos)tril < OE þyrl prad < Dutch paard wright < OE wyrhta, wryhta ‘workman’

O1 VR2 < O1 R2 V burst < OE brestan, berstan bort ‘diamond fragment’ < ge-brot (?) curd < crud dirt < ON drit

118. The Germanic name element in these names is frið ‘peace,’ as in Frederick, Friedman, Friedrich, etc. 119. This is a Southwestern dialect form, same as burches for breeches (OED). 120. Dialectal ‘a grassy enclosure, a paddock’ (OED). 121. Among the ME alternations in rarer or non-surviving items are garsel – gressel ‘brushwood,’ gulch – gluc(c)en ‘drink greedily,’ turpin – tropin ‘hare,’ etc.

296

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

Turning back to Langland, it is appropriate in this context to be reminded of his original and imaginative use of the potential similarity of the O1 R2 V <–> O1 VR2 strings. Here I cite again the examples from Piers Plowman which show how a linguistic attribute is used for creating a special artistic effect: (66)

And Dowel and Do-yvele, wher thei dwelle bothe.’ And Dowel and Do-yvele mowe noght dwelle togideres. Where that Dowel dwelleth, and do me to knowe.’ “Sire Dowel dwelleth,’ quod Wit, “noght a day hennes

6.7

Alliterative patterns in verse and the lexicon

PPl 8.017 PPl 8.024 PPl 8.078 PPl 9.001

The presentation of the data on cluster alliteration in the preceding sections made repeated references to the number of lexical items in which a cluster is represented in a particular text. The comparison would be incomplete without placing these remarks within a broader picture of the lexical pool for items beginning with identical onsets. This section will look into the possibility of a correlation between the frequency of cluster alliteration and the availability of eligible lexical items in the language. By doing this we can address the question whether the poets’ practices regarding cluster cohesion are circumscribed by the availability of topic-appropriate lexical items. It would therefore be interesting to compare the results presented in the previous sections to the overall lexical pool for a particular onset. Table 6.1 lists the MED frequencies, in descending order, for entries beginning with fourteen different clusters. I searched for both the headword entries and for alternative spellings under “headwords and forms” in the electronic edition; the order of frequency is identical for both sets of data.122 The cluster /pr-/ is excluded because the results are skewed by the very high incidence of the prefixes pro-, pre-, per-. The electronically-generated numbers are only an approximation; they cover the full chronological span of the MED, and no single author or scribe would command or use but a portion of the entire recorded vocabulary. Nevertheless, the numbers are revealing in two ways. First, the very prominent cohesive behavior of sibilant + voiceless stop is matched by the size of the available lexical pool. This correlation is rough: the data on cluster alliteration are gathered from art verse and the numbers in Table 6.1 include some statistical noise, especially in the headword count. It is still a novel observation, however, that 122. No “headwords and forms” count for /sk-/ would be meaningful because of the variety of spellings and the massive graphic overlap of /sk-/ and /ʃ/.

6.7 Alliterative patterns in verse and the lexicon

297

Table 6.1 Onset cluster frequency in the Middle English Dictionary Cluster

st-

sp-

gr-

br-

sk-

kr

fr-

kl-

fl-

sl-

gl-

␪r-

sm

sn-

Headwords 968 558 476 460 433 415 362 350 320 259 233 160 138 127 Headwords 1148 591 554 545 n/a 490 404 399 351 312 258 248 159 134 and forms

Table 6.2 Onset cluster frequency in the MED and OED2 Cluster stMED OED

sp-

gr-

br-

kr

fr-

kl-

fl-

sl-

gl-

␪r-

sm

sn-

968 558 476 460 415 362 350 320 259 233 160 138 127 12197 7045 5571 4592 5209 3070 3798 3964 2881 2101 1499 1357 1635

of all cluster-initial words in Middle English, it is /st-/ and /sp-/ words that occur most frequently. This distribution is confirmed by a comparable search of the OED. Table 6.2 compares the onset cluster frequency in the MED and the on-line OED2.123 The consistency with which /sp-/ and /st-/ words appear at the top of the list is quite remarkable. In addition to whatever properties these clusters have, the sheer wealth of lexical choices would facilitate the observance of a convention for cohesive alliteration. The possible interdependence between lexical frequency and cluster cohesion can be tested on other languages. One could also pursue a Darwinian line of speculation and ask whether the cohesiveness of sibilant-stop onsets makes them more likely survivors; fascinating as this question is, this is not the place to consider it.124 The second notable fact emerging from the comparison is that except for /sp-, st-/, the size of the lexical pool does not correspond to the consistency of cluster alliteration. Leaving some cells unfilled because of insufficient data,125 the matching between the overall lexical frequency and the percentage of cluster alliteration in the three fourteenth-century texts is shown in Table 6.3. 123. The results for /kr-/ and /kl-/ include , , and spellings. 124. Whether the universally attested cohesion of these clusters is responsible for, or in any way related to, the significantly larger number of /st-, sp-/ words than words with any other cluster is a matter which can only be ascertained cross-linguistically. Though the logic of the correlation is appealing, the findings on /sn-, sm-/ for English would contradict it. Moreover, there are languages which do allow vowel epenthesis in sibilant-obstruent clusters, such as Korean, see Fleischhacker (2000). The correlation will not be pursued further here. 125. I have taken out the cluster /pr-/ because I have no reliable count of the words in which that cluster appears at the beginning of a stressed syllable.

298

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

Table 6.3 Lexical frequency and percentage of cohesive alliteration in Middle English MED % cohesive % cohesive % cohesive % cohesive MED headwords alliteration alliteration alliteration alliteration Cluster headwords and forms W & W WA PP Averages st

968

1148

100

100

99

99.3

sp

558

591

100

100

97

99

gr

476

554

58

37.5

46.6

br

460

36.5

sk

433

kr

415

490

28.5

fr

362

404

0

18.8

kl

350

399

0

27

14

13.7

fl

320

351

8.3

19.2

11

12.8

sl

259

312

77.7

50

67.6

gl

233

258

0

19

16

11.7

␪r

160

248

n/a

60

54

57

sm

138

159

n/a

77.7

sn

127

134

n/a

545 n/a

44.4 38 n/a

75

12

28.8

100

82

91

10

18

18.8

100

7.5

100 100

8.7

88.8 100

The initial clusters in Table 6.3 are arranged in order of descending lexical frequency. The shaded rows show the most cohesive clusters. The most clearcut comparisons are the drop of frequency of cluster alliteration between /st-, sp-/ and /gr-/, br-/, the juxtapositions of the pairs /sk-/ <–> /kr/ and /kl-/ <–> /fr-/, and the difference between /sm-, sn-/ and the other (relatively) lowincidence clusters, for example /gl-/. In spite of the fact that /sm-, sn-/ are the least frequent onset clusters in the set of fourteen clusters surveyed here, they are much more cohesive than the stop- and fricative-initial clusters. Comparing /sm-, sn-/ to, for example, /fl-, fr-/ makes it evident that, on the whole, different rates of cluster alliteration cannot be attributed to lexical frequency. The possibility of a non-accidental correlation between /sp-, st-/ cohesion and lexical frequency exists, but no such correlation can be claimed for the other clusters. Thus, in spite of fluctuations among the various texts, the overall picture confirms the expectation that the nature of the consonants is an important

6.8 Linguistic foundation of cluster alliteration

299

Fig. 6.4 Cohesive alliteration versus word frequency in Middle English

determining factor in the choice of alliterating pairs. The correlations between lexical frequency and cluster alliteration are shown in the chart in Figure 6.4. The mismatches between alliteration and the lexical pool are quite obvious; lexical availability is not what determines cohesion. The choices are neither random, nor should they be addressed as artistic flourishes of verbal ingenuity. The distribution of cluster alliteration establishes a hierarchy of probability which reflects the phonetic and phonological properties of the onset. The linguistic grounding of this distribution will be discussed in the following section.

6.8

The linguistic foundation of cluster alliteration

This chapter builds on the premise that alliteration in the English verse tradition of the fourteenth century was subject to constraints which mimic those of reduplication. Functionally the two processes are different. In true reduplication the copying is a grammatical process creating a new form. In alliteration the items pre-exist in the lexicon and are selected for their ornamental, esthetic value; the function of the matching is to bind the verse line together. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that in both instances the choice of matching linguistic entities is governed by the same principles of perceptual well-formedness. In verse, the application of these principles can be influenced by the availability of appropriate lexical items, their “alliterative rank” and other non-phonological considerations, but, essentially, the choices are restricted by the composition of the cluster. The heuristic merit of the data presented in this chapter is that it allows us to test the validity of some ideas currently debated in theoretical linguistics. The hypothesis about cluster Contiguity as a universal constraint maintaining the order of adjacent segments, in this case onset consonants, and

300

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

the ways in which this constraint can be violated, follows Fleischhacker (2000, 2001). 6.8.1 Alliterative identity and Contiguity In alliteration, the more familiar base-reduplicant correspondence known and studied in Optimality Theory takes the form of a non-directional relationship of output identity of the onset strings. Alliterative data are therefore a good testing ground for Correspondence Theory; the pairing of stressed onsets in verse can reveal the status and the violability of the Contiguity constraint as defined in (67):126 (67)

Contiguity: For a pair of matching strings S1 and S2 , the segments contiguous in S1 are also contiguous in S2 .

Contiguity is a correspondence constraint which guarantees that the string copied and its copy do not undergo epenthesis or deletion. The three options, satisfaction of Contiguity, and its violations, Splitting and Skipping, are shown in the correspondence diagram in (68):

S1

C ONTI GUITY C1 C2 V 3

S P LITTING C1 C2 V3

S KIP P ING C1 C2 V 3

S2

C1 C2 V 3

C1 V C2 V3

C1

(68)

V3

The hypothesis that the chapter has been testing is that Contiguity alone, or its violations Splitting and Skipping cannot capture the similarity relations that hold across the paired segments in S1 and S2 . That similarity has to be expressed in terms of the content of the corresponding strings, i.e. specific phonetic information has to be built into the phonological model. I have focused only on stressed onset clusters. My data are entirely historical, but the interpretation relates to both phonological change and to the typology of consonant cohesion in general. Except in sibilant-stop clusters, Old English verse required identity only of the leftmost segment, treating Skipping and Splitting in cluster correspondence as acceptable violations. Similarity beyond that leftmost segment was not structurally or esthetically called for. The diagram in (69) shows the correspondence relations of cluster-initial strings in Old English verse; the difference between Splitting and Skipping is structurally irrelevant: 126. McCarthy and Prince (1996b), Kager (1999: 250).

6.8 Linguistic foundation of cluster alliteration (69)

S1 S2 Old English:

301

C ONTIGUITY C1 C2 (V)

S P LITTING C1 C2 (V)

S KIPPING C1 C 2 V

C1 C2 (V) sp : sp, st : st

C1 V (C V) br : bV(r), k l : kV(l)

C1 V tr : tV-, sm : sV-

In Middle English the requirement for alliterative correspondence can be satisfied in three different ways, where only Skipping, or singleton alliteration, is the same as in Old English. Splitting and Skipping are no longer equally ranked violations of Contiguity . (70)

S1 S2 Middle English

C ONTIGUITY C1 C2 V

S P LITTING C1 C2 V

S KIPPING C 1 C2 V

C1 C2 V sp : sp, br : br

C 1 V C2 V sp : sVp, br : bVr-

V C1 sp : s-, br : bV

The three levels of shading in (70) indicate different degrees of satisfaction of the alliterative correspondence: ideally, Contiguity is observed, but if it is not, the next best option is Splitting. Skipping is the “last resort” option; it is the minimum that the parametrical rules demand. Many well-formed clusters such as /gr-/, /br-/, or /fl-/, /fr-/ can be matched in three different ways, but not at the same rate. All three options are sensitive to the properties of the adjacent segments. The parallel between alliteration and reduplication with respect to maximum copying has also been handled by the Totality constraint, defined as “every element in the reduplicant must have a phonologically identical correspondent in the base” (cf. Holtman 1996: 54).127 To tality in alliterative reduplication is an Output–Output constraint whose ranking changes from Old to Middle English, or even from one period and poet to another in Middle English. In Old English verse it was inviolable only for the /s/ + obstruent clusters, but it was very low-ranking for other clusters. For early Middle English verse, Tota l i ty is highly ranked, and not subject to the artificial limitations of Old English. Like Contiguity, the analytical goal of Total it y could not be achieved without further reference to Splitting and Skipping in the corresponding alliterating outputs, only Contiguity defines this need more explicitly within the constraint itself. 127. For an earlier interpretation of Totality as “cohesion,” see Kuryowicz (1966), and the discussion in Suzuki (1996).

302

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

6.8.2 The inadequacy of Sonority Sequencing The special cohesiveness of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in onsets was discussed in chapter 5. It is a well-documented and much studied issue. This chapter has shown that cohesiveness is not an exclusive property of the sibilant-initial clusters, and that these clusters, too, can be non-cohesive, albeit rarely. This gradual behavior argues for a unified treatment of all clusters. Following the familiar notions of cluster well-formedness based on rising sonority from the edge towards the peak of the syllable, the inventory of English onset clusters has been dichotomized traditionally into clusters that violate Sonority Sequencing (sp-, st-, sk-) and all other clusters. (71)

Dichotomy of English onset clusters based on Sonority Sequencing : ¬ OR (sp, st, sk) C1C2

OR (all other onsets)

However, the empirical information from Middle English verse shows that separating /sp-, st-, sk-/ categorically and lumping together “all other” onsets is not justified phonologically. The distribution of Contiguity, Splitting and Skipping depends demonstrably on the phonetic nature of the adjacent consonants, which in its turn motivates the presence or absence of a perceptual break within the onset. Associating onset well-formedness with the sonority slope is nothing new; the most familiar version of this type of observation is perhaps one part of Vennemann’s Head Law. It describes a preferred onset cluster as involving a sharp drop of consonantal strength from the onset to the nucleus (1988: 13–14). (72)

Head Law A syllable head is the more preferred: . . . (c) the more sharply the Consonantal Strength drops from the onset toward the Consonantal Strength of the following syllable nucleus.

The differences between the approach adopted here and Vennemann’s approach are the following. First, Vennemann refers to the abstract phonological property of consonantal strength, while here the reference is to concrete acoustic measurements of sonority whose values influence the phonological behavior of the string. Second, the heuristic technique here relies crucially on the output similarity of comparable onset strings, not on well-formedness per se. Any change that occurs, as in the examples in section 6.6, is accounted for in terms of

6.8 Linguistic foundation of cluster alliteration

303

how similar the epenthetic and non-epenthetic forms are. Finally, Vennemann accounts for the behavior of s + stop clusters by calling the /s-/ a “prependix,” while here the cohesiveness of these clusters does not call for special stipulations. It falls out naturally from the dissimilarity between the clusters as units and their potentially split forms. Group alliteration of /sp-, st-, sk-/ is attributed to the absence of a cluster-internal perceptual break, which inhibits Splitting . In terms of historical change, the maintenance of similarity between successive outputs is a critical factor: two forms like filmsy and flimsy are sufficiently similar for one to change into the other, but I am not aware of any comparable instances involving sibilant-initial clusters. 6.8.3 A hierarchy of onset cluster cohesiveness128 Defining alliteration as identity of the sound or sounds preceding the first major perceptual break at the left edge of the syllable, we can see why clusters for which the perceptual break is minimal or non-existent are systematically matched to each other as units. The more vowel-like the second consonant is, the more likely it is that the cluster will be split. Acoustically, the onset of vowel-like formant structure is interpreted by the listener as a possible break point in the continuity of a consonant cluster. An abrupt rise in intensity, as in the transition from an obstruent to /-w/ in dwell is more likely to create the perception of discontinuity, than a gradual rise, as in a sibilant followed by a nasal.129 Clusters in which the second element is an obstruent are not perceived as splittable in that way; “identity” for them encompasses the entire cluster. The familiar hierarchy of sonority shown in (73) is inversely proportional to the probability of a cluster being interpreted as similar to a split version of

128. In this section I would like to acknowledge again my indebtedness to the line of research currently conducted within OT by Donca Steriade and Heidi Fleischhacker. Fleischhacker has pointed out that the phonetic foundation of cohesion is in the varying salience of the perceptual break between the two consonants. The strength of the perceptual break is enhanced by (a) the high intensity of the formant structure of the second consonant; and (b) a clusterinternal burst which creates a boost in the auditory response and marks the point of speech segmentation. The burst accompanying stops is heard more clearly than that of a fricative in the same position. 129. “Intensity” is an acoustic property of sounds corresponding to loudness. It is “proportional to the average size, or amplitude, of the variations in air pressure.” “In general, vowels have the highest intensity . . . the lateral and nasal sounds [have] only slightly less intensity than the vowels . . . voiceless fricatives [have] very little intensity” (Ladefoged 1982: 169–170).

304

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

itself; everything else being equal, decreasing sonority of the second consonant corresponds to greater cohesiveness of the cluster. (73)

Sonority scale: obstruents < nasals < liquids < glides < (vowels) Cluster cohesion: CO > CN > CL > CW > (CV) C = consonant, O = obstruent, N = nasal, L = liquid, W = glide

Another important parameter in identifying a cluster as a unit versus perceiving it as a sequence of two independent segments, is the effect that the offset of the first consonant creates. The transition point from a stop to a following consonant is more salient in terms of speech segmentation than the transition of a fricative to the same consonant. All else being equal, the most cohesive will be those clusters in which the leftmost segment is less consonantal. (74) shows how a decreasing rate of segmentability relates to cluster cohesion:130 (74)

Salient perceptual burst: stops > fricatives > nasals > (liquids) . . . Cluster cohesion: TC > FC > NC > (LC) . . . T = (oral) stop, F = fricative

Parenthesized clusters are non-occurring onsets in the history of English. Cumulatively, the two parameters define the most cohesive cluster as a stop followed by an obstruent, the only combination that will be at the top of the cohesion scale in both (73) and (74). Clusters that satisfy this description, for example, ∗ pf-, ∗ kt-, ∗ pt-, are unattested in English.131 The next closest combination, which is at the top with respect to (73), and ranks second in (74), is a cluster which is both CO and FC, i.e. FO (fricative + obstruent). The only such combinations in English are the sibilant-stop clusters /sp-, st-, sk-/. All other clusters in the language are less cohesive by virtue of the sonority of their second consonant. Our data on /sm-, sn-/ suggest that although the properties of both parts of a cluster may influence its cohesiveness, the second consonant is more important in that

130. Both in (73) and (74), I am using a standard strength hierarchy, for example Lass (1984: 178), Giegerich (1992: 133). I leave the question of the importance of the voicing of the initial obstruent open. In principle, voiceless obstruents should induce a more salient burst, but I have no alliterative data to test the effect of voicing of the first consonant on the cohesion of the cluster. Also, although it has been argued that strength hierarchies can be language-specific, I have found no evidence that Old or Middle English differed from Modern English with respect to the scale in (73). 131. Cross-linguistically, such clusters will tend to simplify. German /pf/ is a monosegmental affricate, see Wiese (1996: 40), who cites analyses in which all stop-fricative combinations in German are interpreted as potential phonological affricates. Phonetically, simultaneous double closure can result in single articulations, as in kp  , gb  , see Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996: 329–343).

6.8 Linguistic foundation of cluster alliteration

305

respect: consonant + nasal clusters are more likely to be identified holistically than other consonant + sonorant clusters.132 The question of how clusters in which the first element is a stop or a nonsibilant fricative, for example /br-, kl-, dw-, fr-, fl-, ␪r-, ␪w-/, behave with respect to cohesion, has not been addressed in other historical studies of English consonant phonotactics, and it bears further investigation. Since only stops involve more abrupt offsets, one would expect /fr-, fl-, ␪r-/ to be more like the /s-/ initial clusters, where the perceptual break is minimal. Contrary to this prediction, our data show that only /␪r-/ is indeed identified as a unit half of the time, approximating the level of cohesiveness of /sl-/. With both /sl-/ and /␪r-/, however, there were additional considerations of diction and phonaesthetic coloring that may have distorted the picture. The other fricative-initial onsets, /fr-/ and /fl-/, are much more likely to be interpreted as possessing an internal break, i.e. the fricative–sonorant transition appears to be quite similar to a fricative–vowel transition. In our alliterative data these two clusters repeatedly exhibited less cohesion than /s-/ initial clusters and stop-sonorant clusters. With these considerations in mind, the hierarchy of cohesiveness for English cluster onsets based on the alliterative evidence in Middle English is shown in (75). (75)

A hierarchy of cluster cohesiveness: Sibilant fricative + obstruent: /st-, sp-, sk-/ ↓

Sibilant fricative + nasal: /sn-, sm-/ ↓

Sibilant fricative + sonorant: /sl-, sw-/ ↓

Stop + sonorant: /pr-, br-, tr-, dr-, kr-, gr-, pl-, bl-, kl-, gl-, tw-, dw-, kw-/ ↓

Non-sibilant fricative + sonorant /fr-, fl-, θr-/

The hierarchy of cohesiveness resembles the inverse typology of vowel epenthesis sites with respect to consonant clusters in Fleischhacker (2000). (75) is based on the Middle English data collected for this chapter; the hierarchy that reflects it differs from the one that Fleischhacker proposes in two respects: for 132. Steriade (2001: 7) reports that “a relevant finding emerging from the research on similarity is that stricture differences ([±sonorant], [±continuant], [±consonantal]) play the major role in generating dissimilarity judgments, in contrast to voicing and place.” In the case discussed here it is the non-continuancy of the nasals that places them in an intermediate position with respect to cohesion.

306

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

her cross-linguistic material, sibilant-liquid and sibilant-glide are on a separate level, while all non-sibilant obstruents are kept together. I have not found enough data to justify separate levels for /sl-/ and /sw-/, but it appears that there is enough justification to put /fr-, fl-, ␪r-/ on a separate level, especially in view of the high level of split alliteration for /fl-/ and /fr-/. In all other respects the hierarchical arrangement is predictable in that it corresponds to the acoustic properties of the segments included in the cluster. It is only at the top of the scale, with /sp, st-, sk/, that the observations are clear cut, and even there, some tolerance for non-cohesiveness was found in the less-carefully crafted verse in the early Middle English corpus. The other arrangements are tentative, especially in the lower half of the hierarchy. Nevertheless, the findings provide a basis for further study of onset cluster behavior in English, an underresearched issue, and they also add to the information on onset cluster behavior in general. Throughout this chapter I have assumed that the Middle English poets consciously pursued maximum phonological similarity between the onsets of stressed syllables. These onsets stand in a correspondence relation to each other, and their correspondence is circumscribed by the acoustic properties of the cluster’s components. Therefore the evidence from the alliterative compositions is taken as evidence for perceived similarity judgements as defined in Steriade (2001). The particular concatenation of features produces a similarity effect which serves as the basis of the unitary or non-unitary behavior of these clusters. Thus, Middle English alliteration provides historical corroboration for the hypothesis that the behavior of the consonants in the onset is sensitive to the acoustic signal. Except for /sp-, st-, sk-/, all cluster onsets in the history of English have a sonorant as their second consonant. They are not, however, treated equally cohesively in alliteration. This suggests that the inventory of initial clusters based on Sonority Sequencing in (71) must be revised as in (76), with the major dichotomy occurring between sibilant-initial and non-sibilant-initial clusters, and two further divisions along the lines of second consonant sonority and first consonant stricture. (76)

Typology of English onset clusters based on Contiguity: ST (sp-, st-, sk-) SC SR (sn-, sm-, sl-, sw-) C1C TR (br-, pl-, kw-, dr-, gl-, tw-, etc.) ¬SC FR ( fl-, fr-, θr-)

6.9 Cluster alliteration after ME 6.9

307

Cluster alliteration after Middle English

Cluster alliteration is regarded as one of the most salient characteristics of postConquest alliterative verse, but it is in fact a continuation of a linguisticallymotivated practice that existed in Old English. The parametrical rules of verse in both periods reflect the phonological properties of the matching clusters, though they do so to a different degree. The alliterative evidence of Middle English suggests that historically stable levels of cohesiveness can be deployed differently by different traditions. In Old English, the cut off line between /sp-, st-, sk-/ and other initial clusters is interpreted here as one of the “learned” aspects of versification, an artifice which has its linguistic foundation. By “learned” I mean that the inviolable parametrical rule must have been acquired through instruction in the tradition and facilitated by inductively figuring out what the constraints of the model are. In Middle English some poets felt free to ignore the special status of /sp-, st-, sk-/ altogether, extending the notion of maximal onset matching to other initial clusters. In doing so, they presumably relied not on instruction but entirely on their own intuitions about the perceptual similarity of onset clusters. Other poets refrained from violating /sp-, st-, sk-/ cluster alliteration, possibly following instruction or other available models. Crucially, since alliteration is an easily internalized analog to reduplication, the relaxation of the parametrical rules in Middle English allowed the extension of the notion of cluster alliteration to other clusters. The picture is not chaotic: with some glitches, due to the nature of the sources, the patterns found in Middle English confirm the expectations defined by the linguistic properties of the clusters. At the modern end of the chronological scale the verse evidence is diffuse and non-quantifiable. There is, however, one cache of data that seems worth mentioning: the Ablaut words of Modern English (crick–crack, plink–plonk, scribble–scrabble, smick–smack, snip–snap, strim–strum, trim–tram). Going through the most extensive collection of such data (Thun 1963: 323–347), one does not find a single exception to the full onset copying exemplified by the words cited above. Such words, all of them of more recent, post-sixteenthcentury vintage, always and invariably copy the entire onset in reduplication. The reason for that cannot lie in the acoustic properties of the clusters; it is a copying convention similar to the observance of /sp-, st-, sk-/ cluster alliteration in Old English. Historically, then, cluster cohesion was used most sparingly in Old English alliteration. It became a widely used and mostly perceptually motivated part of the alliterative schemes in Middle English, and it is no longer distinctive in Modern English word-formation types where onset identity is required without

308

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

regard to the size or nature of the cluster. Whether the same preferences that were established for the Middle English poets can be shown to exist for modern poets remains an open question because of the rarity and non-structural nature of alliteration in modern poetry in general. My attempt to collect some relevant data from the entire corpus of Seamus Heaney’s Collected Poems (1965–1975) did not turn up any interesting results; the patterns are simply too random to be informative. This is not to deny, however, that we still have a lot to learn about the alliterative patterns in other fourteenth-century works, the continuation of the practice in the fifteenth century, and the reasons for the esthetic shifts away from alliteration in the history of English verse. 6.10

Concluding remarks

This chapter uses Middle English alliteration to establish perceived similarity judgements for onset clusters. In early Middle English the poets felt free to ignore the special status of /sp-, st-, sk-/ altogether. In fourteenth-century verse all clusters were judged to be cohesive, but not equally so. Middle English alliteration has never been looked at from the point of view of the hierarchy of perceptual cohesion of the onsets. I hope to have shown that, literally, there is more to alliteration than meets the eye. The patterns of onset matching found in the fourteenth-century corpus constitute a good basis for testing the validity of recent theoretical claims regarding the constraint Contiguity and its corollaries Splitting and Skipping. In her ongoing study of onset clusters and contiguity Fleischhacker (2001) hypothesizes that “the possibility of deletion or insertion . . . in a specific segmental environment is directly related to the degree of perceived similarity between (i) the string resulting from deletion or insertion, and (ii) the unaffected string.” In this chapter this prediction was tested against data from the alliterative corpus and Middle English scribal and etymological information. Except for /sp-, st-, sk-/, all possible word-initial clusters in English have a sonorant as their second consonant. Phonetic studies show that the transition from an obstruent to a sonorant creates perceptual conditions similar to those arising at the obstruent–vowel juncture. The distribution of alliterative matching in verse thus supports the idea of a universal phonological hierarchy of perceptual cohesiveness in onset clusters. The clusters /st-, sp-, sk-/ are at the top of the scale, followed by s + sonorant clusters, followed by stop + sonorant and fricative + sonorant clusters. While the Middle English alliterative corpus as a whole still bears witness to the primacy of the oral principle in alliteration, it also points to some significant

6.10 Concluding remarks

309

differences from the way the principle was applied to Old English verse. First, the interpretation of onset identity was broadened to include all complex onset clusters. This was accomplished in a manner congruent with a scale of gradient cohesiveness of these clusters. Unlike the Old English scops, some Middle English poets did not interpret any point on that scale as a clear cut-off point for the purposes of versification. Middle English versifiers and their copyists reached deeper into the inventory of possible initial clusters; no clusters were exempt from cohesive treatment. Nevertheless, /st-, sp-, sk-/ were still the leading choices for that practice, while /fr-/ and /fl-/ were more likely to be matched by Skipping and Splitting. The observation that the new patterns of alliteration in Middle English represent a relaxation of the classical parametrical rules is undoubtedly correct, but it is also vague. A closer look into group alliteration in Middle English shows that the innovations on the classical rules are not linguistically undisciplined. Zusammengesetzte St¨abe, a prominent attribute of fourteenth-century alliterative verse, reflect the gradient cohesiveness of the initial clusters in the language. Alliteration optimally involves full consonant identity, and, failing that, consonant identity up to the first perceptual burst in the stressed syllable. The matching of identical first consonants to maximally similar second consonants, i.e. /bl-/ : /br-/, /kl-/ : /kr/, is a special case of optimal correspondence. Additional factors guiding the poets’ choice could be the “alliterative rank,” the phonaesthetic associations, and the semantic malleability of a word, as well as the overall size of the lexical pool. My discussion of constraints on clustering in English started with an attempt to specify the conditions that license the cohesive behavior of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in Old English. In the previous chapter I described and defined, by elimination, the factors that must be present for a cluster to be both well formed and cohesive. A crucial component of the new descriptive account of the properties of /sp-, st-, sk-/ in chapter 5 is the requirement for a minimum overall sonority. This shifts the focus of the explanation from the first to the second consonant. The account pivots around the voiceless stops: the items at the bottom of the sonority scale. In this chapter the focus on the sonority of the second consonant was widened to include other initial clusters. Copying an entire initial cluster, for example /sw-, sl-, pr-, kr-, br- gr-, ␪r-/, etc., was optional in Middle English. Crucially, however, there are no texts in which non-sibilant clusters alliterate as a group more often than sibilant-initial clusters. The patterns of onset identity found in the Middle English alliterative corpus are congruent with independently defined linguistic constraints and as such they constitute a good basis for testing the validity of recent theoretical claims regarding cluster cohesion. Since such data

310

6 Onset and cluster alliteration in ME

is difficult to come by outside the verse evidence presented here, the exercise of gathering all the details has been productive and rewarding, though at times it did feel like counting how many angels may stand together upon a needle’s point.133

133. 1642 R. Carpenter Experience III. iv. 17 : That so many Angels may well stand together without much thrusting upon a needles point.

7

Verse evidence for cluster simplification in Middle English

The most notable change affecting onset clusters in the history of English is the simplification of velar-initial, glottal fricative-initial, and labial approximantinitial clusters to monosegmental onsets. Comparing the reconstructed Old English forms and their Modern English reflexes we find: (1)

Old English a cnif [kni:f] gnætt [gnæt] b hnægan [hnæjən] hringe [hriŋgə] hlædel [hlædl] hwæl [hwæl] c wriþan [wri:ðən] wlisp [wlisp]

Modern English knife [Ønaif] gnat [Ønæt] neigh [Ønei] ring [Øri␩] ladle [Øleidl] whale [(h)weil] writhe [Øraið] lisp [Ølisp]

The loss of the leftmost segments of the onsets in (1a) and (1c) is dated during or after the fifteenth century. The simplification of the /h-/ clusters in (1b) started much earlier, occurring roughly during the transition from Old to Middle English, with the exception of [hw-] –> [(h)w-], a change which is presumed to have occurred later. Moreover, the unaspirated pronunciation [w-] for this historical cluster is characteristic only of some varieties of Modern English. Cluster simplification has been widely studied, but alliterative evidence has not been included in the argumentation for the inception and dating of these events. This chapter will address the behavior of the historically unstable initial clusters: /kn-, gn-, hn-, hr-, hl-, hw-, wl-, wr-/ in alliteration. First, I will present the evidence found in the same Middle English alliterative texts that were covered in chapter 6. This allows comparisons between the use of stable and unstable clusters in alliteration. The verse data will then be placed in the context of broader scribal evidence of the Middle English Dictionary (MED) and The Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the causes for cluster simplification and a proposal for a revised chronology of the changes. 311

312 7.1

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME Historically unstable clusters in Lagamon’s Brut

This section will survey the alliterative use of the three types of historically unstable clusters in Lagamon’s Brut. As in chapters 5 and 6, my main source of data is the earlier Caligula manuscript of the poem (British Museum MS Cotton Caligula A.IX), with references to the Otho manuscript (British Museum MS Cotton Otho C.XIII) wherever relevant. I start with the evidence for the use of the velar-initial clusters /kn-/ and /gn-/. 7.1.1 /gn-/ and /kn-/ in early Middle English There are no /gn-/ initial words in either text of Lagamon’s Brut, while /kn-/ words occur freely in both alliterating and non-alliterating positions. This imbalance between /kn-/ and /gn-/ frequency is a recurring and predictable fact in the Middle English verse material. It correlates with the size of the available lexical pool for the two types of onsets. A search of the MED (putting all derivationally related headwords together), shows only a handful of /gn-/ items eligible for alliteration: gnare ‘snare,’ gnat, gnaw, gnede ‘scarcity,’ gneornung (ger.) ‘mourning,’ gnit (n.) ‘nit,’ gnodden (v.) ‘to rub between the hands,’ gnof (n.) ‘person,’ gnokken (n.) ‘the cuckoo,’ gnost (n.) ‘a spark.’ Practically all of them show alternative spellings with , suggesting voicing neutralization. I will return to this issue in 7.5.2. With all of about ten words to work with, mostly onomatopoeic, the lack of alliterative evidence for /gn-/ is not surprising; the text yields no information regarding the claim that /gn-/ cluster simplification occurred prior to /kn-/ simplification.1 Alliterative information regarding etymological /kn-/ is much more readily available. Here are some specific data on the treatment of /kn-/ in the Brut. The eligible alliterative items in the text are cnaue ‘boy,’ (i)cnawen ‘know,’ cneo ‘knee,’ cneoli ‘to kneel,’ cnif ‘knife,’ cniht ‘knight,’ (i)cnutten ‘knotted.’ I have found no lines in which /kn-/ shows self-alliteration in the canonical aa/ax pattern. The initial consonant /k-/ in the cluster, spelled both and , appears stable, as the alliterative evidence in the following lines attests:2 1. This assumption is made in Lutz (1991: 236, 249) as part of an account of cluster simplification based on the consonantal strength relations of the adjacent segments. 2. The spelling is used regularly for all cognates of kin, including king. There are no spellings in the Caligula MS after line 1400. Further instances of /kn-/ : /k-/ alliteration are found at lines, 3435, 4737, etc.

7.1 Unstable clusters in Lagamon’s Brut (2)

þa cnihtes of þan castle; quic-liche heom wið-stoden. Wonne þu comest to þon cnihten; þat þene king bi-witeð þe king læi on cneouwen; and cleopede to Crist[e].

313

318 359 15999

My search turned up one lexeme-specific aspect of /kn-/ of stylistic interest. The noun cniht ‘man, knight’ and its morphological and spelling variants appear 795 times in the Caligula version of the text. This extraordinary density is not matched by alliterative use of the word: only a minute proportion of the lines in which the word is used alliterate on /k-/. This is apparently a word for which the notion of “alliterative rank” is quite useful. The exclusion of this word from the structural alliteration defines cniht as part of the basic, non-elevated vocabulary of the period. Its use in the poem is driven by the needs of the narrative; it is not part of the special poetic diction. This finding confirms observations on the use of the same word in later texts: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Alliterative Morte Arthure, and William of Palerne.3 As far as simplification goes, the text yields no information about the status of /gn-/ and it confirms the stability of the initial consonant in /kn-/. There are no instances of cluster alliteration for either onset; the significance of this cannot be evaluated fully because of the limitations of the lexical pool for /gn-/ and the metrical uncertainties of the text. The only fact of interest, to which I will return in 7.5.3, is that the overall frequency of the cluster /kn-/ in the MED at 109 headwords and 127 headwords and forms is comparable to that for /sm-/ (138/159) and /sn-/ (127/134). Nevertheless, /kn-/ is never chosen for group alliteration, while /sm-, sn-/ words in this text and elsewhere, alliterate regularly as clusters. 7.1.2 /h-/ clusters in Lagamon’s Brut The etymological sequence of /h-/ + /-r, -l, -n/ had already been simplified in the dialect of the compositor and scribe(s) of both the Caligula and the Otho versions of the text. This statement is based on scribal evidence. Alliterative evidence for the change confirms this:4 3. Comparing the alliterative use of knit and lede ‘man, warrior’ Lester (1996: 105) reports that in SGGK lede appears 38 times, always in an alliterating position, while knit appears 68 times, of which 41 are in non-alliterating positions. Similarly, in MA, lede alliterates in all of the 15 lines where it is used, while knit alliterates only 22 times out of a total of 121 occurrences. Bunt (1985: 84–85) also assigns “low alliterative rank” to knit in WP, though the instances of alliterating knit in his text are high: 79 alliterating; 22 non-alliterating. The lower alliterative rank of the word becomes obvious when it is compared to other synonyms for “man” which are always alliterating, such as frek (×29), gom (×40), and lud (×23). 4. The last MED record of in neck is c. 1150. In rugge‘back,’ OE hrycg was last recorded a. 1150. in lean is slightly later (a. 1225,? a. 1200, Trin.Hom.). No

314 (3)

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME & his nakede sweord; leide on his necke. warp he an his rugge; a ræf swiðe deore. þa leonede he ouer wal; & lude gon cleopien. and alle ða lafdies; leoneden eond walles. ah he lustnede eorne; luðer on his ðohte.

345 11858 5376 12335 13156

The only ostensibly surviving /h-/ initial cluster in Lagamon’s Brut is /hw-/. This cluster is generally assumed to have persisted longest; in some sources its reduction is dated as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. The scribal testimony for earlier simplification is dismissed as affecting only prosodically weak words (Lass 1999: 123–124). Alliterative evidence has not been used in the dating. Since alliteration precludes prosodic weakness, it will be interesting to see what the practice of Lagamon and the other Middle English poets is with respect to this cluster. There are no instances of group alliteration on the historical cluster /hw-/ in Lagamon’s Brut.5 Only two instances of the old spelling appear in the entire Caligula text: ihwær in l. 1482, and nohwar in l. 14624. The later Otho manuscript has one instance of in nohware in line 379. Elsewhere the reflex of OE is spelled either <wh-> or <w->. Although it is the received knowledge on the status of <wh->/ that it was still representing a fricative + sonorant cluster in Middle English, the alliterative evidence for words in Lagamon’s Brut is highly suggestive of identification with /w-/. Some examples of <w-> matching are cited below: (4)

whulche wurð-liche wude; whulche wilde deores. whar ich mihte on wilderne; wurchen ænne castel. a Whiten-sunen-dæie; he þer wærf6 makede. While heo weoren; a ðissere worlde-richen.

5874 7698 8728 9835

Further instances of <wh-> : /w-/ pairing are found at lines 3088, 3515, 5873, 6103, 6136, 7737, 7853, 7886, 7928(?), 7992, 8934, 9009, 9118, 9359, 9483, spelling for loud is recorded in the MED, but the Ormulum has for OE hlude ‘loud.’ The last recorded form for lady is a. 1150. OE hlystan ‘listen’ preserves occasional spellings until c. 1225. 5. The choice of symbol is based on the presupposition that the initial consonant in the cluster is /h-/, a necessary stage in the loss, even if is reconstructed as /x/ in Old English. In line with the assumed lateness of the development, Lass (1999: 122) reconstructs a velar fricative /x/ in this position. 6. This could be a case of uninformative self-alliteration. The word wharf ‘assembly, crowd’ is traced back to OE hwearf , corresponding to OS hwarf ‘crowd,’ MLG warf, werf ‘circle, assembly,’ OHG warb, MHG warp, warf (OED). The word alliterates on /w-/ in the two instances where it appears in the ASPR, Guthlac 263 (hwearfum : woð), Judith 249 (weras : hwearfum).

7.1 Unstable clusters in Lagamon’s Brut

315

15518, etc. While matching with /w-/ is quite common for the instances in which a <wh-> word is used alliteratively, I have found only three instances in which <wh-> allows speculation that it could be matched to /h-/, and in all three lines other factors may be at play.7 The hypothesis of advanced simplification of this cluster in the text is reinforced by additional scribal evidence. First, numerous inverse spellings of etymologically /w-/ initial words in the Caligula version would contradict an assumption of a surviving biphonemic /hw-/: (5)

iwhat ‘went’ (12785) iwhiten ‘known’ (7891) Norhweie ‘Norway’ (2320) wharð ‘became’ (2467) what ‘knew’ (8573) whraðe ‘wrathful’ (9261)

wherfde ‘changed’ whingen ‘wings’ whit ‘wight, man’ whit ‘with’ whreken ‘revenge’

(3151) (14605) (5758, 7975, etc.) (2550, 2581, 2641, etc.) (5393)

The common practice of inserting <-h-> by hypercorrection can only mean that the scribe was aware of the tradition of representing /w-/ with <wh->, but did not know which words merited that spelling. Conversely, etymological initial words are rendered regularly as simply <w->: whær/wær, whanene/wanene, whenne/wenne, whuder/wuder, whulc/wulc. The spelling <w-> for OE /hw-/ has been mentioned in the literature as evidence for early simplification of the cluster.8 It has, however, also been dismissed. In her otherwise thorough study of these issues, Lutz (1991: 34–35, 45–47) rejected the scribal evidence for early simplification of /hw-/ adduced in the earlier scholarship because she believed that the evidence was restricted to prosodically weak interrogative words. Both my alliterative data and additional scribal data not cited elsewhere show that this is not a tenable argument. The 7. The questionable lines are: and whuder þu hatest; for þu ært ure hærre. Hamun hine bi- þohte; whet he don mihte. and huden heom wel i whar; þe while men sloh Gillomar.

2702 4627 9119

In 2702 <wh-> may be outside the /h-/ : vowel alliteration, and 9119 and 4627 are suspect because the rhyming scheme makes the alliteration structurally irrelevant. 8. See, for example Luick (1914–1940: §704), Harris (1954: 56–60), and Sievers and Brunner (1942: §217). Skeat (1867: 205) pointed out that the change is more advanced in the South, the implication being that these spellings reflect the pronunciation and the orthographic practice of Anglo-Norman scribes for whom /hw-/ would have been a “foreign” cluster. Harris (1954) is the most thorough and convincing advocate of early simplification of /hw-/. He recognized the possibility of coexistence of the new /w-/ with /hw-/ already in late Old English, and citing considerable scribal evidence he concluded that by the thirteenth century the simple form was more common (1954: 56–60). Harris does not address the evidence of the Caligula text of Lagamon’s Brut, restricting his comments to the pervasive <w-> of the Otho manuscript.

316

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

scribal simplification data in Lagamon’s Brut include not only the <wh-> interrogatives, which would be predictable “leaders” in this development, but also other historical /hw-/ words used in the text: (6)

warf ‘turning’ wate ‘swift’ wuruen ‘attacked’ wile ‘time, while’ wite ‘white’ iwet ‘sharpened’

OE hwearf OE hwæt OE hweoðerian OE hwile OE hwit OE hwettan

(2070, 17485) (7137) (9140) (115, 174, 336, 456, etc.) (594) (30579)

The combined evidence from alliteration and spelling is quite convincing: the Caligula version of Lagamon’s Brut, dated a. 1225 (?a. 1200) 9 shows a highly advanced stage in the reduction of the etymological cluster /hw-/. It is in the nature of each phonological change that it does not affect every single lexical item at the same time. Even, and particularly, within a framework of gradual /hw-/ reduction, alliteration becomes a particularly strong argument for positing early /h-/ loss. The prosodic prominence of alliterating words is more likely to trigger associations with hyperarticulated variants typical of slow and careful speech, and in a system allowing only incipient variation those would, of course, be the conservative /hw-/ pronunciations. The predominance of /w-/ alliteration therefore makes it clear that the initial /h-/ was not a stable and distinct part of the older /hw-/ cluster in Lagamon’s dialect. 7.1.3 <w-> clusters in Lagamon’s Brut The last set of historically unstable clusters to be considered is /wl-, wr-/. There are no /wl-/ words in the text. The use of /wr-/ in Lagamon’s Brut is in keeping with reconstructions describing the reduction of /wr-/ to /r-/ as a post-Middle English change (Harris 1954: 97, Lass 1999: 122). The cluster alliterates regularly on /w-/: (7)

mid wieleden mid wrenchen; mid wunderliche strengðen. þa iwerð he swiðe wrað; & þas word seide. þat weoren æi wimman; swa wræcchelichen atoene. & we wreken wurhliche; ure wine-maies.

949 1914 6036 10040

Further examples are found at lines 870, 1580, 4103, 10522, etc. The pool of lexical items from which alliterating words can be drawn is very substantial: 9. The dating is from the MEC Hyper-Bibliography. It should be noted that all etymological /hw-/ items are spelled <w-> in the somewhat later, c. 1300 Otho Ms. Thus. ‘whetted,’ <wales-bone> ‘whales-bone,’ <witsontime> ‘Whitsuntide,’ etc.

7.1 Unstable clusters in Lagamon’s Brut

317

there are over fifty entries of <wr-> headwords in Madden’s Glossary (1847: III. 651–652). Some items are of exceptionally high frequency: references to wrað ‘anger,’ writ ‘(letter)-writing,’ and wreken ‘avenge(ing)’ are very central to the narrative. Lines in which <wr-> words are used in alliterative positions occur commonly, both with single and with group alliteration: (8)

and wrað him iwræððed; wunder ane swiðe. and his wreche sende; an wræstliche þan folke.

10665 14764

In addition to the lines cited in (8), where the <wr-> words are freely combined, there appears to be a special stylistic flavor to the use of some /wr-/ words in the text which cluster in the same line. The author repeatedly conjoins writing and wrath; similarly, we find the formulaic cognate object in writen a writ ‘to write a writ’ as in line 1573 below:10 (9)

þe king nom þat writ on hond; & he hit wrodliche bi-heold he letten writen a writ; & wel hit lette dihten. A writ he lette makien. mid muchere wraððe; Cezar iseh þis writ; and he hit wraðliche biheold.

244 1573 3651 3679

While the alliterative use of <wr-> in (7)–(9) indicates survival of a bisegmental onset /wr-/, a note of caution is in order. Searching for <wr-> in Lagamon’s Brut turns up some lines in which the cluster seems to alliterate on /r-/: (10)

& þat writ wes irad; imæ[n]g þan Rom-leden. þan kaisere heo radden; þat he write runen; and riden to Rom-leoden. mid raere wraððen. what-se hæfde richedom; he hine makede wræcche mon.

6183 12647 13863 3269

(10) represents the entire set of lines where the question of /r-/ alliteration of a <wr-> word may arise. The coexistence of reduced and unreduced variants of the same cluster is always a possibility, therefore the usage illustrated in (10) may be evidence for just that: incipient and variable cluster reduction. On the other hand, the observance of a strict alliterative scheme in Lagamon’s Brut is far from perfect; in lines 6183, 12647, 13863 there are other /r-/ words to carry the alliteration, and line 3269 is held together by rhyme. I will assume therefore that the <w-> initial clusters were still bisegmental in the poet’s language. 10. This particular phrase is not unique to Lagamon. Ælfric and Wulfstan use gewrit awrat, and in Middle English we find write writtis in Orm, writen . . . wriht in Alexander B, etc. The phrase is also recorded in Oakden (1935 [1968]: 217, 312).

318 7.2

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME Wynnere and Wastoure

Jumping ahead to the middle of the fourteenth century, and looking at the alliterative practice in a much more tightly structured poem, produces results quite similar to the results found in Lagamon’s Brut. There are no initial words used in Wynnere and Wastoure. There are eleven instances of /kn-/ : /k-/ alliteration, at lines 80, 81, 134, 203, 205, 210, 315, 327, 468, 491, 502. The /kn-/ cluster is repeated twice in lines 83 and 485: (11)

And by þe cabane I knewe the knyghte that I see And luke thi knave hafe a knoke bot he þe clothe sprede

83 485

However, the word knyghte ‘knight’ in line 83 is editorial; the manuscript has kynge, corrected by the editors on the basis of the surrounding text. The proportion of singleton to cluster alliteration is thus strongly in favor of the former, a distribution similar to the one found for /kn-/ in Lagamon’s Brut. Another parallel can be drawn between /k-/ clusters that are historically stable and clusters that undergo simplification. The distribution of the three clusters in Wynnere and Wastoure is shown in (12): (12)

# word # of OR1 : OVR1 / Cluster types tokens Singleton Cluster OR2 kn kr kl

5 7 6

20 8 13

11 3 9

2 2 0

511 2 2

% cluster alliteration 11.1 28.6 0

In spite of the higher density of /kn-/ tokens in the text, the percentage of cluster alliteration for /kn-/ appears to be low. One must be cautious with these counts, however: the numbers are small and the discrepancy between /kr-/ and /kl-/ is a sign of warning that the distribution may not be based on cluster cohesion. Two factors make the use of /kn-/ clusters in alliteration difficult to interpret in terms of cohesion: the overall number of available lexical items in the vocabulary of the poet and the specific items required by the narrative in the text. A headword and forms search in the MED shows the results in (13): (13)

Cluster

MED headwords

MED headwords and forms

12

415 350 109

490 399 127

11. In lines 81, 205, 210, 315, 485 /kn-/ is matched to /kl-/. There is no repetition of lexical items, no formula involved here. This does not appear to be of phonological significance; rather, it is an accidental effect of the frequency of /kl-/ words in the text – 8 headwords and 28 tokens. 12. There are 32 forms in the MED, all of them duplicating primary entries under .

7.2 Wynnere and Wastoure

319

The ratio is about 4 : 1 in favor of the words with the historically stable clusters. As pointed out in chapter 6, the numbers alone are not definitive; the internal composition of the cluster and the varying frequency of individual tokens must also be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, these counts give us a fair idea what lexical pool a poet would have been drawing on in trying to match an entire velar-initial cluster. Thus in addition to relating the low incidence of cluster alliteration to the overall paucity of words with that cluster, there is also the factor of specific lexical choice. More than half of the /kn-/ tokens in the text are forms of the verb know. It is possible that the word can be thrown in as an alliterative filler, as in l. 315: That bene knowen and kydde ‘that are known and recognized,’ but it is normally a necessary semantic component of the narrative. On the other hand, clene ‘bright(ly)’ is inserted regularly for the sake of alliteration. Such considerations make inferences on the cohesiveness of /kn-/ unreliable. All we can say is that in terms of dating, the treatment of in Wynnere and Wastoure supports the assumption that that spelling still represents a biphonemic sequence in the fourteenth century. Among the /h-/ initial clusters of Old English, the single potential survival in Wynnere and Wastoure is /hw-/. There is only one line in the text in which one of the 13 <wh-> initial words participates in the structural alliteration, and in it the <wh-> is self alliterating and therefore uninformative:13 (14)

Whitte als the whales bone / whoso the sothe tellys

181

The <wh-> is not provably part of the alliterative scheme on [h-] in line 150: (15)

With thre hedis white-herede / with howes one lofte

150

This scansion assumes that white-herede ‘white-haired’ has verse-induced prominence on the second half of the compound, a phenomenon of compound behavior familiar from isosyllabic verse. Prominence on white would induce stress clash if hedis ‘heads’ is monosyllabic, as it might well have been. More importantly, the pattern of a disyllabic dip between the two lifts in the a-line is normative for this poem.14 The other uses of the adjective white (in lines 144, 156, 175) are outside the alliterative scheme. Thus the evidence for in this text allows both a /hw-/ and a reduced /w-/ interpretation. Turning to <w-> clusters in Wynnere and Wastoure: not surprisingly in view of the length of the poem, there are no <wl-> -initial words in the text. W&W 13. Alliteration in line 181 could be aa/bb, with right-prominent whoso and b-line alliteration on /s-/. This scheme is not reported elsewhere in the poem (Trigg 1990: xxxi–xxxvi). 14. On the avoidance of weak medial dips in the a-verse in Middle English alliterative poetry see Duggan (2001).

320

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

is one of the earliest texts of the alliterative revival. In it, alliteration of <wr-> with <w-> appears to support the continuing biphonemic status of the sequence spelled <wr->: (16)

Wyse wordes and slee / and icheon wryeth othere Loo! this wrechide Wastoure, / that wydewhare es knawenn

6 326

This pattern is found in another eight lines: 198, 201, 309, 395, 423, 424, 439, 465. The only two instances of self-alliteration are in lines 71 and 324, where the /w-/ alliteration is confirmed by the matching to <w-> in the third alliterating lift in the line: (17)

Wroghte als a wodwyse / alle in wrethyn lokkes. Bot than this wrechede Wynnere / full wrothely he lukes

71 324

In lines 57 and 200 <wr-> appears to be paired with initial words: (18)

For to ridde and to rede / and to rewlyn the wrothe And fro he wiete wittirly / where the wronge ristyth,

57 200

This matching is ambiguous. There is only one other line in the text with extra rich rhyme aa/aa, line 167 (Domynyke : daye : dynttis : dele) which weakens, but does not eliminate the case for /r-/ in wrothe ‘anger’ in line 57. Whether line 200 is aa/ax or aa/bb is impossible to determine; statistically the former is more likely. The occasional bb scheme does occur in the b-verse, however, for example 103, 386, 476.15 This would allow the possibility of /r-/ alliteration in line 200 (wronge : ristyth). As mentioned above, the simplification of <wr-> is standardly assumed to have been a mid-fifteenth-century development, though the dating can be called into question by earlier spellings (Minkova and Stockwell 1997b: 41–42). I leave open the possibility that some simplification may have been underway already in the fourteenth century which would justify the reconstruction of a <wr-> : echo in W&W. We will return to the discussion of <wr-> in 7.7. 7.3

The Wars of Alexander

Collecting data on the historically unstable clusters from The Wars of Alexander is important because of the numerous northern characteristics of the text. If the alliterative practice of a poet is taken as a basis for reconstructing his phonology, there should be some differences between texts originating in different 15. On this point, see also Trigg (1990: xxxv).

7.3 The Wars of Alexander

321

geographical areas. This expectation is confirmed by the findings in this text, especially with respect to /hw-/ alliteration. The evidence regarding the velar-initial clusters /gn-, kn-/ in the Wars is as follows. A single appearance of gnaistes ‘gnashes’ in 5447 is line-final. There are no other words in the text. The types and tokens of /kn-/ are much more prominent. There are 15 glossary headword entries with the spelling ( is not used in either manuscript of the poem). The cluster appears in alliteration 153 times. In another 61 lines a word is placed outside the alliterative scheme. The ratio of single (/kn/ : /k-/) to double (/kn-/ : /kn-/) alliteration is strongly in favor of splitting the cluster. Not counting five lines in which it is difficult to decide whether a word is used structurally or decoratively, at 100, 2648, 2998, 3654, 5044), the examples below represent the total set of lines in which cluster alliteration on /kn-/ is used in the poem: (19)

And kneland on þe cald erth he knockis on his brest For he knew not of our knithede ne of our kid strenth It contraries knithede e knaw wele ourselfe þat vnnethes ken may a knit to knaw to his fere He knelis doun with his knitis on þe cald erthe Lest he ware knawyn for þe kyng þe knit for to blinde

1722 1950 2332 4207 5055 5360

This low incidence of group alliteration of /kn-/ was observed in the other texts too. Note also the reliance on the forms of two lexical items: knit ‘knight’ and forms of the verb knaw(e) ‘know.’ Here is a comparison between the rates of cluster alliteration on /kn-/ and the two other /k-/ clusters in The Wars of Alexander:16 (20) Cluster

# word types

# of tokens

Singleton alliteration

Cluster alliteration

% cohesive alliteration

kn kr kl

15 34 46

214 92 237

142 66 124

6 7 46

4 9.7 27

An additional observation is that for both /kl-/ and /kr-/ there are instances of triple alliteration, here conflated in the penultimate Cluster alliteration column, while no triple alliteration lines are attested with /kn-/. The discrepancy discussed in the other texts is in evidence here too: /kn-/ is less likely to appear in cluster alliteration than other voiceless velar initial onsets, even though the frequency of /kn-/ tokens is similar to, or exceeds that of, the other clusters. 16. The chart excludes the instances of /kr-/ : /kVr-/ (×12) and /kl-/ : /kVl/ (×8) alliteration.

322

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

The only potentially surviving /h-/ cluster in the Wars is /hw-/. Both versions of the poem are assumed to be copies of exemplars with West Midlands (for A) or Midland or perhaps West Midland characteristics (for D).17 In the Ashmole manuscript, whose scribe worked in Durham or possibly South Northumberland, the most common rendition of Old English is or , though occasionally <wh-> is also used. In the Durham manuscript, which was written in the Northeast, around Durham or Northumberland, Old English words are usually spelled <wh->, with <what> alternating with and one spelling for ‘whether.’ The poet’s language, as reconstructed on the basis of the alliterative practice, reflects the survival of the initial segment “in parts of the North and North Midlands . . . [as] a very strongly aspirated /xw-/” (Duggan and Turville-Petre 1989: xxxvii). Interestingly, the editors note (ibid.) that this text shares with The Siege of Jerusalem and The Destruction of Troy the practice of matching etymological to etymological . Such matching is found in the following lines: (21)

Quirris furth all in quite of qualite as aungels Of þe qwele of fortoun þe quene þat [whistely] changis18 For h[i]m was quartirs of qwete vmqwile out of nombre

1679 1977 4640

The fact that the italicized forms: qualite ‘quality, rank,’ quene ‘queen,’ quartirs ‘quarters (measures of grain),’ can alliterate with etymological as in quite ‘white,’ qwele ‘wheel,’ qwete ‘wheat,’ is an important dialect criterion. Duggan and Turville-Petre’s (1989: xxxvii) assumption of doublet forms both for /kw-/ and for /hw-/ in the poet’s language is confirmed by alliteration. Etymological /hw-/ alliterates on /h-/ in: (22)

e behald me sa hogely quareon is our mynd Of þe quilke he hopid in his hert sumquat to knawe

269 679

Awareness of an advanced, reduced pronunciation of the cluster as a simple /w-/, possibly through familiarity with the southern dialects, is suggested by the following lines: (23)

For now vs wantis in a qwirre as þe quele turnes Bot quen ne in quat time sal qwaite19 þe þis auntir And sone þe wacchemen without quen þai him þare sawe

1980 1232 5290

17. For the localization of the sources and the description of the scribal practice for the two manuscripts, I rely on Duggan and Turville-Petre (1989: xxv–xxvii, xxxi–xxxiv). 18. This is the Durham MS reading. The Ashmole text has <swiftly>. 19. The word is of uncertain origin (Duggan and Turville-Petre 1989: 207) and appears only in the Ashmole manuscript. The MED lists the spelling as a variant of the verb waiten ‘to await

7.3 The Wars of Alexander

323

Finally, in four lines neither spelling nor alliteration can be a reliable guide as to what sound was intended to be matched.20 Given the diversity of the matching, we can summarize the findings as indicative of a conservative northern retention of the bisegmental cluster, while at the same time the existence of Southern reduced forms is occasionally confirmed even in this text. The last clusters to be considered in the Wars are the /w-/-initial clusters. The <wl> items used in the poem are wlattis, pr.pl. ‘disgust,’ wlated, pp. ‘disgusted,’ and wlonk, adj. ‘excellent,’ each of them appearing only once. In line 4406 the word wlattis is outside the alliteration, and in the other two lines, 5215, and 5760, <wl-> is only optionally matched to /w-/.21 There are 26 headword <wr-> entries in the Glossary of Duggan and Turville-Petre’s edition of the Wars. The alliterative distribution of these items is entirely in favor of bisegmental composition of the cluster: none of the 87 instances of alliterating /wr-/ suggests reduction. Cluster alliteration, as in the lines cited below, is very rare: (24)

And so þe wee in his wreth wrekis his modire Sire we haue wayued to ow writtis it write we þe same Is wrawid and wrathfull of will and wode as a lyon

978 2820 3294

Only three other lines: 2877, 3290, 4518 (and 203 in the Durham manuscript) show this pattern. There are no lines in which the cluster occurs more than twice. The most frequent cluster alliterating pair is write and writ, at lines 203, 2820, 2877, 3290, see the comments on this formulaic phrase in (9) above. Self-alliteration on /wr-/ in two lifts occurs only about 10 percent of the time. The splittability of the cluster is strongly supported by the pairing of /w-/ with /w-/ + vowel + /-r-/, as in: something’ also used reflexively, here probably in the meaning ‘be on the lookout for,’ ‘befall’ (MED). 20. The ambiguous lines are: And que þir it for any quat a quyle latt him kepe And whyne ert þou and who and what makys þou here So que þir þai here or elsquat it hurtis ay þe saule Quirland all on queles quen þe quene entres

581 835 4686 5420

Duggan and Turville-Petre (1989: xix) list line 4686 as /h-/ alliteration, but it could possibly involve vowel alliteration on or and ay. 21. The full lines are: A worthi wedow and a wlonk with thre wale childire It wald haue wlated any wee þat welth to behald

5215 5760

324 (25)

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME Vnethis werped he þat worde þe writt me recordis Of wrichis and wirlingis out of þe west endis Of were ore of wristillinge for þus has wirid shapen And if þou wirke þaim al þe wa and wrak at þou may [h]e will me wreke on oure werke wers þan of thefes

709 1857 2387 2846 3327

For a clearer picture of the rate of separability for the /wr-/ cluster, the following table compares the distribution of /wr-/ cohesive alliteration to the cohesive alliteration shown by other clusters in which the second segment is /-r-/ in The Wars of Alexander: (26) Cluster

# word types

Singleton alliteration

Cluster alliteration

Split OR1 : OVR1

% cohesive alliteration

gr br dr tr fr kr wr

67 87 48 54 32 34 26

99 121 61 50 52 66 53

109 69 34 24 12 7 6

21 81 30 13 32 12 28

58 36.5 36 32.4 18.8 9.6 10.1

The counts in (26) suggest that the relatively low incidence of group alliteration for /wr-/ is not a matter of available vocabulary. The MED lists 211 headwords and 288 forms and headwords in <wr->, a fairly solid group, but still about half that for /kr-/.22 Moreover, the density of alliterative uses of /wr-/ words is slightly higher than that of /kr-/ words, which are quite high in the frequency range for Middle English shown on Table 6.1, chapter 6 (at 415 and 490 respectively) and also exceed the <wr-> words used in this text. The other figure that deserves a comment is the high rate of split OR1 : OVR1 alliteration for /wr-/ which accounts for about one-third of the alliterating occurrences, a rate comparable only to the split alliteration of /br-/ and /fr-/. 7.4

Piers Plowman

We will start the discussion of historically unstable clusters in Piers Plowman with the velar-initial clusters /gn-, kn-/. As noted already, the set of initial words in Middle English is limited and therefore the incidence of these 22. I am grateful to Paul Schaffner, the “e-MED” Production Coordinator for information regarding the overall occurrence of <wl-> and <wr-> in Middle English. At the time that this book is going into production (December 2001), the entries for <wl-> and <wr-> are not available as part of the on-line MED.

7.4 Piers Plowman

325

words in alliterative positions is predictably low. The single line where alliteration could be used to ascertain the continuing cluster status of is line 10.057: (27)

And gnawen God with the gorge whanne hir guttes fullen

10.057

Although the line is cited from the B-text, the basis of all other data on Piers Plowman in this and the previous chapters, the same alliterative scheme appears in the A-text (11.44) and the C-text (11.41). However, we cannot be certain that this single line can be taken as reliable evidence for bisegmental /gn-/. The concatenation of three alliterating lifts is a possible variation on the more frequent aa or aax in the first half-line in the B-text (Schmidt 1978: 359), yet the syntactic nature and prosodic position of the word should also be considered. Gnawen ‘gnaw, revile’ is the inflected verb in the clause, and assuming an ictus on a verb in any alliterative composition can be problematic. Besides, gnawen God ‘revile God’ would have right-prominent phrasal stress, another reason to assume that gnawen can be accommodated in the initial dip rather than constitute a lift. The distribution of dips and lifts in the line is uninformative in either Cable’s (1991: 92–93) rules for the first half-line, or in Duggan’s more open-ended “minimum” requirements for the a-verse (2001: 496). In addition, gnedi ‘hungry, greedy’ alliterates on /g-/ in PPl.C (Hnt HM 137) at line 16.86 and PPl.B (RwlPoet 38) at line 5.347. In both cases the emendation is proposed and preferred in the printed versions. There are no /kn-/ : /gn/ alliterating pairs in the text. Though such evidence is not strong, it still suggests that the simplification of /gn-/ cannot have been advanced in Langland’s dialect – it may not even have started. Words in are matched either to another word, or, much more frequently, to /k-/ initial lifts:23 (28)

Clothed hem in copes to ben knowen from othere, Comen up knelynge to kissen his bulle. Thanne kam ther a Kyng: Knyghthod hym ladde; And knytten it on a coler for oure commune profit Thanne I courbed on my knees and cried hire of grace, In kirtel and courtepy, and a knyf by his syde;

P.56 P.73 P.112 P.169 1.079 5.079

The density and regularity of this type of alliteration leaves no question that the initial velar stop was still pronounced and that it was identified with /k-/ in Langland’s speech. There are over a hundred lines in the Prologue and the first fifteen passuses (5341 lines) of the B-text in which /kn-/is matched to /k-/. 23. There are no spellings in the B-text.

326

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

Since the onset is still clearly a cluster, one would expect some proportion of self-alliteration. However, there is only one line in that very large sample in which the entire cluster is repeated: (29)

Or a knyght from a knave there – knowe this in thyn herte.

6.049

The lexical choice of /kn-/ words is not very rich, but it includes some items of great frequency: beknew, biknowen, knappes ‘buttons,’ knave/knaves, knees, knele(d), knelynge, knock ‘blow,’ knokked, knoweliched ‘acknowledged,’ know(en), knyf/knyves, knyghted, knyght(es), knyghthod, knytten, yknyt. The most frequent items alliterating on /k-/ are forms of know, knight, kneel. A comparison between /kn-/ cluster alliteration which is below one per cent in Piers Plowman, and cluster alliteration of /kr-/ (18 percent) and /kl-/ (14 percent) in the text is of interest. As for /kn-/ (11.1 percent) versus /kr-/ (28.6 percent) in W&W, see (12) above, the numbers here might suggest that the degree of cohesiveness – treated as a factor enhancing the chance for cluster alliteration – is a function of the sonority of the second segment in the cluster. Liquids have a clearer formant structure than nasals and they are therefore higher on the scale of sonority. In an ideal abstract setting, therefore, one would expect /kn-/ to behave more cohesively than /kr-/ and /kl-/. Recall, however, that the overall ratio of /kn-/ words compared to /kr-/, /kl-/ words is very low, about 1 : 4. As shown above, Langland uses only eight distinct roots in /kn-/. Echoing the account of the discrepancy between /kn-/ and /kr-/ group alliteration in W&W, I propose to attribute the results in Langland to the paucity of the lexical pool and to idiosyncratic stylistic choices. It is possible that the discrepancy between singleton and cluster alliteration for /kn-/ in this text is also due to avoidance of clusters in which both segments are non-continuants; this issue is taken up again in 7.5.3. We now turn to /h-/ initial clusters. No survivors of the Old English /hr-, hl-, hn-/ onsets are found in Piers Plowman. The cluster whose distribution remains to be tested is /hw-/. Most of the <wh-> items in the text are words which tend to be intrinsically low-prominence words and are therefore outside the alliteration: whan, what, wheither, whennes, wher, whereby, while, whilom, which, why. The evidence for cluster reduction in these words is uniform and quite compelling, as the following lines show:24

24. Uninformative self-alliteration appears in 14.041 (wherof : wherfore; wherby).

7.4 Piers Plowman (30)

Bothe in wareyne and in waast where hem leve liketh, And there myghtow witen if thow wilt whiche thei ben alle To wite what his wille were and what he do sholde. I Have wonder for why and wherfore the bisshop And of whennes he were, and whider that he thoughte. The which was Dobet, where that he wente.

327

P.163 2.045 3.117 11.301 16.175 19.129

As pointed out already, proponents of the hypothesis that the reduction of /hw-/ to /w-/ belongs to a much later date argue that such evidence is irrelevant because it is confined to prosodically weak words. Like Lagamon, however, Langland often uses these words in syntactic functions and stylistically contrastive positions that require prosodic prominence, as in 2.045, 3.117, 11.301, 19.129 above. Moreover, the evidence for simplification covers also items outside the prosodically ambivalent interrogative words. Cluster simplification is confirmed by the pairing of fully stressed <wh-> words with /w-/: while ‘time,’ whiten ‘whiten,’ the whyes ‘the whys, causes,’ etc. (31)

“Whit wyn of Oseye and wyn of Gascoigne, For to werche thi wille the while thow myght laste.’ Wowes do whiten and wyndowes glazen, And wordeden wel wisely a gret while togideres.25 Now awaketh Wrathe, with two white eighen, “For to werche by thi wordes the while my lif dureth.’ And wepen whan I sholde slepe, though whete breed me faille. For alle that wilneth to wite the whyes of God almyghty, And thus thorugh wiles of his wit and a whit dowve

P.229 3.028 3.061 4.046 5.133 6.056 7.121 10.124 15.407

The list above is not exhaustive, but it documents well the widespread nature of the /w-/ alliteration for stressed <wh-> words. Crucially, the items in the above set never alliterate on /h-/, and this is a significant finding regarding the dating of the reduction. A related issue is the alliterative practice with respect to <wh-> in who, whom, whose, whoso. The question is whether they alliterate on /w-/ or on /h-/ if they appear in the appropriate prominent position in the line.26 More specifically, the question is how an /h-/ alliteration should be interpreted. Although by their very nature these items are not good alliterative choices, there are some 25. It is possible that the alliteration in this line is aa/bb, in which case while would not alliterate. 26. The expectation for a /w-/ variant during the fourteenth century is suggested by the alliteration of this word in other texts, for example Worþy wemlese God, in whom y byleue

SJ 197

328

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

examples in the text where it seems to be the case that whom, who, whoso alliterate either on /h-/, or, by extension, on a vowel: (32)

And God asked of hem, of whom spak the lettre, For whoso27 hath moore than I, that angreth me soore. Whoso hadde the hood sholde han amendes of the cloke. Who is bihynde and who bifore and who ben on horse28 – And whoso ete that, ymagynen he sholde,

1.049 5.116 5.325 17.106 19.279

The examples are not ideal, yet it is worth noting that if the intended alliteration in them is on /h-/, this could be evidence for early loss of /-w/ in this particular item, unenlightening with respect to the history of /hw-/ elsewhere. The loss of post-consonantal /w-/ when followed by a back vowel, as in suster ‘sister’ < OE sweostor, is attested from the twelfth century onwards (Jordan 1934/1974: 155). The raising and backing of OE /a:/ in hwa ‘who’ to /ɔ:/ and to /o:/ in the Midlands and Gloucester is also a very early change (Luick 1914–1940: 363). The chance of /-w-/ absorption into the back vowel would be predictably higher in unstressed position, i.e. a /h-/ reconstruction for who, whom, whose, whoso as the dominant variant in Langland’s language is plausible. Comparing two of LALME’s Southern maps for the word who, we see that the ‘ho-’ type (h+vowel) on map 1103 is much more densely attested than the corresponding ‘wo-’ type (w + vowel), found on map 1104.29 27. Here and in 5.325, 19.279 whoso may be right-stressed, in which case the examples are uninformative. For the compound indefinite determiner whoso the possibility of /s-/ alliteration is supported by: That who soseith hem sothest is sonnest yblamed! And se bi his sorve that whoso loveth joye,

3.283 19.066

Ambiguous involvement of whoso in alliteration appears in: And whoso helpeth me to erie or sowen here er I wende, To over sen hem hymself ; whoso best wroghte, And whoso ete of that seed hardy was evere

6.065 6.113 19.292

There are no instances of unambiguous alliteration on /w-/, though some /w-/ echoes are possible in P.195, 6.001, 17.017: That witnesseth Holy Writ, whoso wole it rede – “This were a wikkede wey but whoso hadde a gyde “And whoso wercheth after this writ, I wol undertaken,

P.195 6.001 17.017.

28. In 17.106 there might be a /b-/ echo; it is also possible that the alliteration is on bihynde and horse. 29. The corresponding maps for whose (maps 1107 and 1108) show almost identical distribution of “ho-” type (h + vowel) (×17) and “wo-” type (w + vowel) (×16). Why the <w-> forms are not as rare for whose as they are for who is not clear; maybe the link between the nominative

7.4 Piers Plowman

329

In summary, the alliterative practice in Piers Plowman produces no evidence for a continuing bisegmental status of <wh->, while there is good evidence that the cluster had been reduced. The exact phonetic nature of the resulting onset is unclear, i.e. it could have been the voiceless labiovelar approximant or fricative [w], but in any case it was already an allophone of /w-/. It will be assumed therefore that in Langland’s speech /hw-/ had already been simplified. The other cluster whose history we can try to reconstruct from alliteration is /wr-/.30 Like the author of Wynnere and Wastoure, Langland clearly gives preference to /wr-/ : /w-/ alliteration: (33)

And if hym wratheth, be war and his wey shonye. And wolde that ye wroughte as his word techeth. Therinne wonyeth a wight that Wrong is yhote, In witnesse of which thyng Wrong was the firste, Swiche weddynges to werche to wrathe with Truthe! Whan ye witen witterly wher the wrong liggeth.

P.174 1.013 1.063 2.108 2.117 3.176

Group alliteration on /wr-/ is a prominent feature of the text. (34)

I wolde be wroken of tho wrecches that wercheth so ille, Ther as wrathe and wranglynge is, ther wynne thei silver; That Wrong was a wikked luft and wroghte muche sorwe. If Wrathe wrastle with the poore he hath the worse ende,

2.195 4.035 4.062 14.224

The high rate of cluster alliteration should be interpreted cautiously. It has been observed repeatedly that <wr-> words share semantic properties; it is therefore possible that the repetition of the cluster in the line is driven not by its inherent cohesiveness, but by the semantic associations of the lexical items in this group.31 This would be particularly likely for Langland, whose alliterative technique is marked by widespread matching of items on the basis of morphological and semantic relatedness. My inspection of the data for the entire text shows a pronounced tendency for the use of derivatives of the same root, for example spere/ spereth, smyth/ smytheth, bisnewed/snow, both with and the genitive was shaky and the latter was associated with the other interrogatives which were, of course, /w-/ words. The results for forms with , are conflated as ‘w(h)as’ (map 1109). Similarly, for whom (map 1106), the two types of initial spellings are bundled together as ‘w(h)am.’ 30. The eligible items are: wranglynge, wrastle, wratheth, wrecched, wrecchednesse, wrecches ‘wretch,’ wrighte ‘craftsman,’ writ, writen, writhen ‘clenched,’ wroken ‘avenged,’ wrong(es), wroot, wroth, wrotherhele ‘misfortune,’ wroughte, wryngen. 31. The common semantic field, as described in Kay and Wotherspoon (2000: 57) is “torment, distortion or discomfort.” Kay and Wotherspoon suggest further that the semantic and visual associations of <wr-> qualify it for a “silent phonaestheme” or “graphaestheme.”

330

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

singleton onsets and with clusters. This suggests that while alliteration is indeed the factor triggering and enhancing the wordplay in the poem, the selection is often governed by the availability of semantically and morphologically-related words.32 As noted in the discussion of /wr-/ in Wynnere and Wastoure, the reduction of /wr-/ is usually dated to the middle of the fifteenth century, but there are some early instances of spellings. Piers Plowman’s B-text contains one line that may indicate simplification of the cluster to /r-/: (35)

Or ellis al riche and ryden aboute; I, Wrathe, reste nevere

5.14933

5.149 is an isolated case of possible matching of /wr-/ to /r-/. Moreover, the editorial punctuation suggests that I, Wrathe, were probably intended as parenthetical; these appositive elements in the line could be extrametrical and would be irrelevant for the alliteration. For Langland, therefore, the assumption of a continuing bisegmental /wr-/ can be upheld, with caution. There are no <wl-> words in the text.

7.5

Notes on the history of velar cluster reduction

None of the texts examined here yielded reliable information regarding the dating of the velar loss in /gn-/. The alliterative use of /kn-/ confirmed its bisegmental status. The behavior of that cluster was compared to the behavior of other velar-initial clusters. After expanding and summarizing the evidence for /gn-/ and /kn-/ in the alliterative corpus, this section will turn to scribal evidence for the neutralization of the two clusters. The section 32. Langland’s delight in wordplay is recognized in the literature. As noted by Schmidt (1978: xxxiii) “His [Langland’s] word-play may be said to grow out of his metre: the alliterative poet compelled to choose words beginning with the same sound often stumbles into homophony more easily than the writer of rhyming or blank verse.” Further interesting alliterating pairs are: Cristen–uncristen 1.093, prechours–prechynge 4.122, grave–ungrave 4.130, clothes–yclouted 6.059, pledours–plede 7.042, glotonye–forglutten 10.083, blissed–blisse 11.167, flight–fleeth 12.239. The phenomenon is even more pronounced with singleton onsets, for example tale–tolde P.51, coupled–uncoupled P.207, kyngene–kyng 1.105, bidding–bad 1.110, unkynde–kyn 1.192, servaunts–servyce 3.217, dooth–dede 5.043, namely–name 5.258, thonked–thoght 8.109, sleuthe–slow 13.407, deme–domes 15.027, filled–ful 15.337, wite–witterly 18.066, nede–nedes 18.400, deidest–deeth 19.175, dede–doon 19.183, demen– domesday 19.197. 33. The corresponding C-text lines (VII. 126) have the same clausal division (Schmidt 1978: 269); this might put wrathe outside the alliteration.

7.5 History of velar cluster reduction

331

ends with a discussion of the chronology and causation of velar cluster reduction. 7.5.1 Summary of the alliterative evidence on velar-initial clusters The entire set of eligible items in /gn-/ in the MED is given in (36): (36)

gnachen (v.) ‘gnash’ gnacher (n.) ‘one who gnashes’ gnachinge (ger.) ‘gnashing’ gnappen (v.) ‘snap’ gnare (n.) ‘noose, snare’ gnaren (v.) ‘snare, entrap’ gnasten (v.) grind, gnash’ gnaster (n.) ‘one who gnashes gnasting(e (ger.) ‘gnashing’ gnastren (v.) ‘gnash’ gnat (n.) ‘gnat’ gnauen (v.) ‘gnaw’ gnauer (n.) ‘one who gnaws’

gnauing(e (ger.) ‘gnawing’ gnede (adj.) ‘stingy, niggardly’ gnedelche (adv.) ‘barely’ gneden (v.) ‘be lacking’ gnedi (adj.) ‘hungry, greedy’ gneornung (ger.) ‘mourning’ gniden (v.) ‘crush by rubbing’ gnit (n.) ‘a nit’(?) gnodden (v.) ‘to rub’ gnof (n.) ‘fellow, churl’ gnokken (n.) ‘the cuckoo’ gnost (n.) ‘spark’

There are no /gn-/ initial words in either text of Lagamon’s Brut or in Wynnere and Wastoure. A single appearance of ‘gnashes’ in The Wars of Alexander is line-final. The dating of /gn-/ simplification cannot be tested very reliably in Piers Plowman, though the survival of the cluster as such is suggested by the use of /gn-/ : /g-/ alliteration in a few lines. Going outside the texts covered in detail here adds little to these inconclusive findings. A well-crafted line in the Parliament of Three Ages, an early fifteenth-century text suggests continuing bisegmental interpretation for /gn/:34 (37)

Gnattes gretely me greuede and gnewen myn eghne

50

No /gn-/ alliteration is used in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Alliterative Morte Arthure, and The Siege of Jerusalem. Searching later fifteenth-century verse has been unproductive. There are two isolated examples of possible /gn-/ alliteration in the Towneley Plays35 and a line in another source, Henryson’s Fables: 34. Text c. 1450(?a. 1400) Parl.3 Ages (Add. 31042). The search was based on all texts available in the MEC. 35. The Towneley Plays EETS (1966), re-edited from the unique MS by George England with sidenotes and introduction by Alfred W. Pollard, London; New York [1966] Early English Text Society Extra series no. 71. The plays originated c. 1430 (Pearsall 1977: 298). Text available through the MEC.

332 (38)

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME (Then wofully sich wightys) Shall gnawe thise gay knyghtys Bot gyrned and gnast, my force did, I frast, With watter caill, and to gnaw benis or peis,

Lazarus 129–130 The Judgement 103–104 Fables 321

These matchings should not be overestimated. Alliteration in the Towneley Plays is not obligatory, and the line from Lazarus may be a /k-/ alliteration. Henryson’s alliteration is not structural. Therefore, no arguments regarding the dating of /gn-/ reduction can be made safely on the basis of alliteration. The evidence regarding /kn-/ was found to be much more ample and reliable. All four texts investigated for that feature show unequivocal preservation of the velar. The findings support fully the standard accounts which date the beginning of the reduction to the middle of the fifteenth century, though some sporadic early, possibly dialectal or even idiosyncratic, spellings may suggest a somewhat earlier date.36 7.5.2 Voicing neutralization in velar-initial clusters An important issue relating to the history of the initial segment in the velar clusters is the stability of what is traditionally thought of as the “voicing” distinction in these onsets. The devoicing of preconsonantal is suggested by, for example: (39)

For þe colde wyntter and þe kene / with gleterand frostes

W & W 275

An editorial emendation of gleterand ‘sparkling, glittering’ to cleterand or clengande have been proposed (Trigg 1990: 34), but the intervention would be unnecessary if we recognize the potential for preconsonantal voicing neutralization of the velars. Similarly, alliterative /kn-/ : /g-/ pairings such as occur at lines 1003 (kneled/knes : God), 1096 (knit : go), 3284 (kneled : grounde), 4410 (knit : graunt), all from William of Palerne, have been noticed, but, with some uneasiness, editors and commentators have regarded those as unconvincing or aberrant.37 Lutz, whose explanatory framework leads to the assumption that /gn-/ should have been reduced before /kn-/, notices the fact of “occasional” spellings for /gn-/ but dismisses an earlier claim by Horn regarding the general 36. The evidence and the extensive literature on /kn-/ reduction are surveyed in detail in Lutz (1991: 238–244). She also summarizes the two most detailed proposals concerning the path of simplification (Catford 1974) and K¨okeritz (1945). A simplified and informative scenario of the reduction is given in Lass (1999: 123). 37. See Schumacher (1914: 129, 213), Bunt (1985: 81).

7.5 History of velar cluster reduction

333

convergence of /kn-/ and /gn-/, at least for the standard language ([1954] 1991: 237). My own survey of the scribal documentation convinces me that neutralization between the two clusters is the correct reconstruction and that the appearance of greater tenacity for /kn-/ is due solely to the larger size of the lexical pool of /kn-/ words. The scarcity of alliterative evidence for the preservation of bisegmental /gn-/, either as [gn-] or as [kn-], in Middle English is not an automatic indication of earlier reduction for /gn-/ as compared to /kn-/. It is interpreted here as a direct consequence of the restricted lexicon from which the poets were drawing. The total choice of words with ME is very limited. The search of the MED recorded above turned up a total of twenty-five headwords for which is a possible spelling, and, as is obvious from the list in (36), many of them are derivatives of the same stem or rare and uncertain forms. Moreover, we find spellings for a considerable number of etymological /kn-/ words; the latter can be spelled both with and with : (40)

Etymological /kn-/ spelled : cnaggen (v.) ‘to fasten’ knak(k)e (n.) ‘stratagem, a blow’ knape (n.) ‘a male infant, servant’ cnappen ‘to snap’ MDu. cnappen knarre (n.) ‘crag’ knarri (adj.) ‘gnarled, knotted’ knouen (v.) ‘know’

ME ME ME ME ME ME ME

In view of the minimal number of etymological /gn-/ words in the language, the proportion of spellings for /kn-/ is very high. It is strongly indicative of voicing neutralization of the initial velars in the cluster. Further evidence for the confusability of /gn-/ and /kn-/ comes from the opposite phenomenon, Middle English spellings of etymological /gn-/ as :38 (41)

Etymological /gn-/ spelled : gnast ‘spark’ ME gnauen ‘gnaw’ ME gnat ‘gnat’ ME gneden ‘to be scanty’ ME gniden ‘to crush’ ME 39 gnoff ‘churl, person’ ME

38. A special case is the /<sn-> doublet in gnare/snare, and gnap/snap. The MED gives the etymology of the word gnare ‘a noose, snare,’ as “[?A blend of snare ; grane, var. of grin].” 39. The MED etymologizes as a blend of gniden ‘to crush’ and knag(ge) ‘blow.’ It is a word attested in ?a. 1475 Ludus C.(Vsp D.8) 355/12: What boy bragge outh, hym spilly I; as knave, wyth this craggyd knad hym kylle I.

334

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

It is important to note that the spellings cited in (40) and (41) are all based on MED records after the thirteenth century. A search of the entire LAEME database failed to produce a single comparable example. This suggests that / and continued to be both stable and strictly separate spellings for distinct phonemic entities in Early Middle English. Though the LAEME and MED databases allow us a fairly reliable reconstruction of the chronology of the neutralization, the reason why there are no signs of it in the earlier materials is not clear. It is possible that the delay is only apparent and is to be attributed to the uneven size of the pre- and post- 1300 materials, or to the more systematic preservation of the Old English spelling practices in the LAEME manuscripts. The interpretation that the later criss-crossing of : spellings supports is that of neutralization of the laryngeal feature distinctions of the prenasal velars, not of phonologically determined temporal lag of /kn-/ reduction. If we assume that in that position the laryngeal feature responsible for the /g-/ : /k-/ contrast was [spread glottis], as is argued for other Germanic dialects by Iverson and Salmons (1995, 1999), the neutralization started most likely as a consequence of the loss of aspiration for the /k/. This could have been initiated by prestigious socially marked, French-based unaspirated /k-/ in pre-nasal position in the south already in the thirteenth century. The subsequent history of the two clusters is inconclusive; there is no difference in the treatment of /gn-/ and /kn-/. Recent /gn-/ attestations, such as the eighteenth-century borrowed pronunciation of the German word gneiss as (optional) [gnais], or the Anglo-Irish gneve [gni:v] ‘the 12th part of a ploughland,’ or the Italian gnocci [␩ɒki] ‘dumplings’ with an initial palatal nasal (OED), are strictly learned, spelling pronunciations. This is true of /kn-/ pronunciations too, as in cnimial [kni:miəl] ‘relating to the tibia’ (1871), cnicin [knaisin] ‘a plant principle,’ cnida [knaidə] ‘a nettle cell’ (1876), but cnicnode (1869), cnictrope, Cnideria (1884), cniderian (1934) have [n-]. The dating of the velar-initial cluster reduction in English ranges over a long stretch of time. Lutz (1991: 236–237, 249) assumes loss of /gn-/ in the southern and Midlands dialects already in the late fourteenth century. This dating is inferential – it is part of an account of cluster simplification based on the consonantal strength relations of the adjacent segments, here referred to as Sonority Sequencing (SonSeq). In principle the logic is sound since conformity to SonSeq may be one of the factors that can affect the rate of historical change, yet the evidence for this particular pair is missing. In the philological literature the reduction of the cluster is associated with the disappearance of /gn-/ words from the vocabulary. It is true that the (minimal)

7.5 History of velar cluster reduction

335

frequency of such words appears to decrease during the fourteenth century. Such lexical loss, not phonologically conditioned, can undoubtedly be a contributing factor in the evolution of the change. However, while the scribal confusion for etymological /kn-/ and /gn-/ is widespread, there is no spelling evidence showing spellings for etymological /gn-/ words that antedates the spellings for etymological /kn-/.40 In addition to familiar later spellings, a closer look at the MED reveals scribal evidence of quite early /kn-/ simplification: (42)

Etymological /kn-/ spelled : knobbe ‘knob’ ME 41 knew(e) ‘knew’ ME (c. 1300, King Horn) horse-knave ‘horseman’ ME <(horse)nave>, a. 1314

Apart from spellings for /kn-/ during the fifteenth century, there are occasional inverse spellings for etymological /n-/: (43)

Etymological /n-/ spelled noying ‘harm, annoyance’ 42 nou ‘now’ 43

No comparable early evidence is found for /gn-/. Since nothing else supports a presumed late fourteenth-century loss of the initial velar in the surviving /gn-/ words, the dating of /gn-/ reduction prior to /kn-/ reduction is unwarranted. Therefore a causal connection between the date of simplification and the respective consonantal strength of /g/ and /k/ as hypothesized in Lutz (1991: 249) should also be rejected. It is much more likely that the two changes overlapped 40. Lutz (1991: 137) acknowledges the absence of late Middle English and early Modern English spellings of for /gn-/ both in the OED and in the specialized studies offering scholarly surveys of the evidence for the loss. The single possible pre-1500 source she cites is nip ‘to bite,’ first attested 1393, which the OED connects, tentatively, to two parallel forms, and , of which only the latter is provenanced to Low German and Dutch knippen. The inverse spellings, for /n/ as in for ‘nose’ (MED a. 1425), but no for /n/ create further problems for claims of chronological precedence of /gn-/ reduction. 41. The forms appear in a thirteenth-century lyric. The full citation is c. 1250 þene latemeste dai (Trin-C B.14.39) 32: þenne sulen woremes woniin þe wid-innen, Ne salt þu þe nout weriin wid neppe [vr.nappe] ne wid pinne ‘Nor shalt thou thyself not be dressed (wear) with ‘cnaep’ nor with pin.’ Dr. Margaret Laing of the Institute for Historical Dialectology, University of Edinburgh, believes (personal communication) that “here the word is MED’s knap(pe and may be ‘knob’ ‘tassel’ ‘button’ -evidently something ornamental. But it may have been an adaptation by the Trinity scribe (or a precursor of him in the textual stemma), from nappe/neppe from OE hnaep ‘cup,’ ‘drinking bowl.’ ” In any case the unambiguous spelling nobbes ‘knobs’ appears a. 1398 (MED). 42. a. 1425 Medulla Grammatice (A Latin-Middle English Glossary ): 44. 43. a. 1475 Liber Cocorum (Sln 1986) p. 7: Furmentex . . . Take know mylke, and play hit up . . .

336

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

chronologically, but that the simplification of /kn-/ stretches over a longer period of time because of the larger number of high frequency lexical items involved in the change. 7.5.3 The non-cohesiveness of /kn-/ One observation in connection with the textual findings earlier in the chapter was that /kn-/ appears to be less cohesive than /kr-/, though a difference between /kn-/ and /kl-/ could not be ascertained for Wynnere and Wastoure. This was found to be unrelated to the frequency of the /kn-/ tokens used by a particular poet. We should be reminded that the frequency of /kn-/ words in the lexicon is comparable to the frequency of /sm-/ and /sn-/ words, yet the latter behave much more cohesively, as shown Table 6.3 and Figure 6.4 in chapter 6. The chart below combines our data on /kr-/, kl-/, and /kn-/ alliteration found in Wynnere and Wastoure, the Wars of Alexander, and Piers Plowman: (44) Cluster

W & W% cohesive alliteration

WA% cohesive alliteration

PP% cohesive alliteration

% cohesive alliteration averages

kn kr kl

11.1 28.6 0

4 9.7 27

1 18 14

5.3 18.8 13.7

All voiceless velar initial clusters are separable. Their non-cohesiveness can be explained with reference both to their acoustic and their articulatory properties. One possible factor involved in that behavior could be that the formant transitions of velars take longer than the transitions in alveolar or labial sounds (Ladefoged 1982: 183). This factor may enhance the chances of initial velars in onset clusters to be perceptually disassociated from the following segment. Also, the role of the second part of the /kn-/ cluster should be considered. All stable members of the stop + sonorant group have as their second element sonorants that have a clearer formant structure than nasals. In that context, stop + nasal clusters would be undesirable both acoustically, because of the relatively low position of nasals on the sonority scale compared to other sonorants, and also due to the relative difficulty of producing adjacent stops. The differences between /kn-/ and other /k-/ initial clusters indicate that there are other forces at work, i.e. the articulatory effort of producing a sequence of two non-continuants. There are no other onset clusters in English that share noncontinuancy. In other words, while some gestural overlap would be easier with other velar-initial clusters, the dorsal-coronal non-continuant combination in /gn-, kn-/ makes them maximally non-overlapping.

7.5 History of velar cluster reduction

337

The argument made here therefore is that this particular property of /gn-/ and /kn-/, their non-cohesiveness, must be worked into the account of their later history. This is different from the claim that the reduction of /kn-/ and /gn-/ was due to the “unfavorable strength relations” within the cluster, as hypothesized in earlier studies.44 The trigger, in the account proposed here, is not so much that the clusters /gn-, kn-/ suffer from some universally defined syllable structure deficiency, though adjacent non-continuants are indeed non-optimal articulatorily, but that the inherent separability of the clusters contributes to confusion of their initial elements. 7.5.4 Chronology and causation of /gn-, kn-/ reduction The neutralization of distinctions between /g-/ and k-/ before /-n-/ in the onset is only the first step in the long process of replacement and loss of the first segment. We do not know when exactly the perceptibility of the initial velar began to decrease before the nasal and why. It is certain, however, that the process was already under way by the beginning of the fifteenth century, i.e. it is a change which started in Middle English. One possible proximate cause of the change is the absence of /gn-/ and /kn-/ words in the new vocabulary of Middle English: Latin and Old French disallowed these onsets.45 The persistence of the clusters in the North (Luick 1914–1940: § 801, K¨okeritz 1945) and the complex sociolinguistic history of the change in early Modern English and into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Dobson 1968: § 417, cited in Lutz [1991: 244]) does support an assumption of loan phonology interference. Thus, the particular phonetic makeup of the cluster is only a necessary enabling factor for the reduction. The change may have been initiated through the influence of loan phonotactics. Once preconsonantal velars became non-distinct in the onset, a process replicating the Gallo-Roman convergence of /kl-/ and /gl/,46 the path of reduction and loss is open. Either one of the detailed mechanisms of the change, K¨okeritz (1945) or Catford (1974), both of which incorporate the famous intermediate stage /tn-/ will “naturally” result in the reduction of the cluster to a single segment. Both accounts are plausible, though Catford’s four-stage progression 44. See Vennemann (1988: 19), Lutz (1988: 229–231). 45. This excludes loanwords and names borrowed from Greek directly or via Latin which are either or . 46. The change is described in Pope (1934/1961: 96). Other similar ‘confusions’ in the history of Romance are the Gallo-Roman substitution of /kl-/ for /tl-/, see Pope (1934/1961: 67), and the change of /kr-/ > /gr-/ > /γr-/ > /r/ (Lat. lacrima, OF larme), or /gm-/ > /(γ)m-/ > /m-/ (1934/1961: 133), though the latter are developments in medial position. The point is that a preconsonantal position in a cluster is perceptually vulnerable.

338

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

with each step corresponding to testable phonetic data from present-day Scottish dialects seems somewhat more attractive.47 By “naturally” I mean that once the perceptibility of the initial segment is damaged, the remaining changes are phonologically predictable, though not necessary. This does not mean that the intermediate steps have to be the same in each case, or that the whole cycle reconstructed for English should be repeated in every language which has a /gn-/ : /kn-/ contrast.48 The inverse spellings cited in (40)–(41) in the previous section attest to the reduced distinctiveness of the velar stops before the nasal. I suggest that it was at that point that the phonology of the two clusters started to change and a new mapping of contrasts arises. The framework from which the term “mapping” is taken is the OT-based theory of the P(erceptibility) map, developed by Donca Steriade. She defines the P-map in the following way (2001: 2): The distinct grammatical component, which I call the P-map . . . is a set of statements about absolute and relative perceptibility of different contrasts, across the different contexts where they might occur. For instance, the P-map will be the repository of the speaker’s knowledge that the [p]-[b] contrast is better perceived before V’s (e.g. in [apa] versus [aba]) than before C’s (e.g. in [apta] versus [abta]).

Extending this idea to the historical development of the velar-initial clusters, an important component of the change was that that the contrast [k] : [g] was not perceived well before [n]. That part of the grammar of a late fourteenthcentury speaker would be best understood if the distinction between /g/ and /k/ was a matter of aspiration or [spread glottis]. In pre-vocalic position, the distinction can be maintained better, while before another consonant, especially 47. The stages Catford (1974: 23) posits are: /kh n/ (Aberdeenshire > /k’n/ (Glenesk, N. Angus); k’ = no audible release of the voiceless velar stop, though Catford calls this “nasal release”) > /t’n/ (barely audible [t-], Angus, rare) > /kn/ (Shetland Isles, complete assimilation of the velar to the nasal). The last stage is probably best represented as some kind of premodified nasal, for example /nn/ (Lass 1999: 123). 48. Note that an assumption of [spread glottis] rather than [voice] as the feature distinguishing /g/ from /k/ (see 5.3), makes the insistence on establishing chronological ordering unnecessary because a /kn-/ and /gn-/ contrast based on spread glottis makes voicing irrelevant in favor of aspiration. The loan phonology would not have offered aspirated /k-/. Guion (1996: 192–194) reports an experiment in which trained phoneticians were asked to transcribe [g] + vowel stimuli without noise. Interestingly, “some of the transcribers heard [k]’s.” The data were excluded from Guion’s statistics, however (1996: 193), so it is hard to say to what extent Ringen’s and Jessen’s (2001) [spread glottis] analysis for German stops is supported by these results.

7.6 History of /h-/ clusters

339

a relatively low sonority consonant, the distinction will no longer be perceived. The appeal of Steriade’s model is that “A P-map account . . . predicts . . . this: insofar as a C-cluster contains one and only one C whose confusability with Ø is greater than that of the other cluster members, cluster reduction will target this one consonant” (2001: 42). In our case absence of aspiration in the initial velar takes the [k] in [kn-] out of the set defined by the remaining prevocalic aspirated [kh ] tokens in the language. The phonetic disassociation of [k] in /kn-/ from /k/ elsewhere in the onset allows further weakening of the one-time velar – it ceases to be part of the /k/ family of sounds. Since the coronal /-n-/ of the cluster is never in any danger of being confused, reduction eliminates the initial consonant, with an intermediate stage of “confusion” with a perceptually adjacent element, another coronal, sometimes represented as , and even misheard as [t-]. This is the “barely audible [t-]” reported in Catford (1974). In summary, the ideas that this section has entertained are the following. First, the laryngeal feature difference in velar-nasal clusters was neutralized in Middle English. Second, regional preservation of the distinction and the survival of velar-nasal clusters in the North support a possible link of the change to Romance phonotactics. Third, the low rates of cluster alliteration can be attributed to lexical and phonological factors: the relative paucity of lexical choices, the acoustic properties of velars, and the phonetic undesirability of the velar-nasal sequence, especially when both segments are non-continuants. Finally, the attrition of the velars is a consequence of their greater confusability with each other and with Ø while the nasal remained perceptually salient and stable. 7.6

Notes on the history of /h-/ clusters

7.6.1 Alliterative treatment of /x-/ clusters in early Old English Before we turn to the summary of the alliterative data on clusters in Middle English, a look back into their alliterative use in Old English is in order. The umbrella statement about initial /x-/ in Old English alliteration is that it behaves like any other consonant, i.e. it alliterates with itself, irrespective of the nature of the following consonant or vowel. The reconstruction of a voiceless velar fricative phoneme /x-/ in Germanic and early Old English follows from its genealogical connection with Indo-European /k/. The realization [x-] in onsets may have survived longer in preconsonantal position than in singleton onsets, except for , which presents special problems, see 7.6.3 below. It is assumed that approximately by the end of the tenth century the [x-] in most

340

7 Verse evidence for cluster simplification in ME

onsets had become a glottal [h-] and it continued as a glottal fricative [h-] in Middle English.49 Phonotactically, a voiceless velar fricative /x-/ in the onset of stressed syllables is restricted to a pre-sonorant position; the full set of allowable combinations of is /xV-, xr-, xl-, xn-, xw-/. An early and tightly structured poetic text like Beowulf provides a baseline to which subsequent developments can be compared.50 The following chart shows the distribution of lines in Beowulf in which the relevant clusters are found. The notation x in the first column stands for the sound spelled , not for an abstract alliterating position. Thus xr : xV stands for the pattern represented by hronrade : hyran (l. 10). (45) Alliteration pattern

Singleton alliteration

xr : xV xV : xr xr : xl xl : xr xr : xw Total xrxl : xV xV : xl xl : xr xr : xl Total xlTotal xn-51 xw : xV xV : xw xr : xw Total xw-

54 58 1 4 2 119 9 13 4 1 27 7 10 9 2 21

Cluster alliteration

% Cluster alliteration

7

7

5.5

0 0 0

0 0

1 4.5

49. The dating of the initial change of [x-] to [h-] is hypothetical. All we can say with certainty is that the historical progression is from [k-] –> [x-] –> [h-], with the end-points associated with Indo-European (for [k-]) and Middle English (for [h-]). In the literature the assumptions regarding the phonetic nature of the velar fricative in Old English are often unclear. Most recently Anderson (2001) says at p. 206 that “the [x] variant [in OE] forms clusters with a preceding /r/ or /l/,” citing hrof ‘roof,’ hlaf ‘loaf,’ hnutu ‘nut,’ hwæl ‘whale’ as examples, but then on p. 210 he says: “In OE [h] clustered with various sonorants,” citing the same set of examples (my italics). 50. The statement follows Fulk (1992: 390) whose arguments date the composition of Beowulf between c. 725 and 825. 51. All examples of alliterating /xn/ are of the type /xV/ : /xn-/, with the cluster appearing in the first lift of the off-verse.

7.6 History of /h-/ clusters

341

The density and stability of /x-/ alliteration, attested in 192 lines, must be taken as unambiguous proof that the pre-sonorant consonant was treated like any other consonant. The only possible exceptions to the expected pattern in Beowulf are found at lines 1390, 1975:52 (46)

Aris, rices weard, / uton hraðe feran53 Hraþe wæs gerymed, / swa se rica bebead54

Beo 1390 Beo 1975

These lines do not reveal much about the status of /xr-/ in fully stressed onsets. Out of a total of thirteen attestations of the adverb hraðe/hraðor ‘quickly,’ the matching in l. 1937 (handgewriðene : hraðe) is the only other instance in Beowulf in which the adverb must alliterate. In nine lines: 224, 543, 740, 748, 1294, 1310, 1541, 2117, 2968, the placement of the adverb explicitly prohibits alliteration on hraðe/hraðo. Three lines (1576, 1914, 1975) are potentially ambiguous, for example in 1975 the adverb could be in anacrusis. Since the prosodic prominence of adverbs in Old English verse is variable, and since hraðe in Beowulf is predominantly non-alliterating, line 1390 suggests that indeed initial /x-/ weakening may have started early in words of low prominence. While this isolated exponent of a possible early change is unsurprising, it does not invalidate the assumption that in the language of the poet /x-/ was still /x-/ in all fully stressed positions.55 52. These “exceptions” were cited in Stockwell and Minkova (1997a: 67). I no longer believe that they represent valid evidence for /h-/ deletion in ; they are simply a reflection of the weak prosodic status of the adverb. 53. ‘Arise, guardian of the kingdom / let us quickly go’ 54. ‘Quickly was cleared / as the mighty king had bidden’ 55. Specifically, the alliterative attestations counted in the chart are as follows: