Seah

Abstract: This paper argues that the unique alliterative pattern of Beowulf 27 7b seah on enta geweorc follows from several factors associated with phrasal prosody, i.e. the tendency for lexical verbs to receive stronger stress than auxiliaries, the tendency for clause-initial verbs to receive stronger stress than verbs elsewhere in the clause, and the stressability of verbs relative to that of other elements in the same prosodic phrase or verse. Part I has shown, first, that verbs tend to be weaker in stress than nouns in Present-day English: Sievers’s Rule of Precedence thus most likely follows from natural prosody of Old English. On the other hand, the alliterative patterns of finite lexical verbs in Beowulf indicate that verbs receive certain amount of stress. In Part II, section 5 discusses verses in Beowulf where weakly stressable words such as pronouns and demonstratives take precedence over nominals in alliteration, which implies that verbs should have chance to alliterate in violation of Sievers’s Rule of Precedence. Section 6 argues that alliteration on enta geweorc as a formulaic expression is not necessary although the context in which 27 7b occurs does not unequivocally show strong stress on the verb. It also shows that the rare alliterative pattern and other problems associated with verse 27 7b are not solved by Donoghue’s ( 987) emendation. Finally, section 7 gives conclusions and the Appendix gives a list of verses in Beowulf that violate Sievers’s Rule of Precedence.