Aspects of Medieval English Language and Literature: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of the Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics 3631771800, 9783631771808, 9783631780312

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Aspects of Medieval English Language and Literature

STUDIES IN ENGLISH MEDIEVAL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Edited by Jacek Fisiak Advisory Board:

John Anderson (Methoni, Greece), Ulrich Busse (Halle), Olga Fischer (Amsterdam), Marcin Krygier (Poznań), Roger Lass (Cape Town), Peter Lucas (Cambridge), Donka Minkova (Los Angeles), Akio Oizumi (Kyoto), Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (UC Berkeley, USA), Matti Rissanen (Helsinki), Hans Sauer (Munich), Liliana Sikorska (Poznań), Jeremy Smith (Glasgow), Jerzy Wełna (Warsaw)

VOL. 55

Michiko Ogura and Hans Sauer with Michio Hosaka (eds.)

Aspects of Medieval English Language and Literature Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference of the Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.              

Cover Design: © Olaf Gloeckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg       ISSN 1436-7521 E-ISBN 978-3-631-78031-2 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-78032-9 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-78033-6 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b15209 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2018 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

To the memory of Ewald Standop (1921-2018: Würzburg) and Eric Stanley (1923-2018: Oxford) ―scholars, colleagues and friends

Contents List of Abbreviations ..............................................................................................

 9

Maps and Pictures ..................................................................................................  13 Preface and Acknowledgements ...........................................................................  15 Part I  Poetry Hironori Suzuki 1 The composition of ‘auxiliary + main verb’ constructions in Old English poetry ....................................................................................................  23 Hideki Watanabe 2 The Significance of nacod nið-draca (Beowulf 2273a) Reconsidered: The Metaphorical Link Interconnecting fire, swords, warriors and monsters .............................................................................................................  41 Andrew Breeze 3 Brunanburh Located: The Battlefield and the Poem .....................................  61 Part II  Prose Joyce Hill 4 Ælfric’s Polemic of Orthodoxy versus Error: An Analysis of the Name-Game .......................................................................................................  83 Tomonori Yamamoto 5 From Verb Simplexes to Periphrastic ‘Modal Verb + Infinitive’ Constructions: A Semantic and Syntactic Study of the OE Boethius, with Reference to the Four Poems in the Junius Manuscript ......................  97 Javier Martín Arista 6 The design and implementation of a pilot parallel corpus of Old English ....................................................................................................  111 Liliana Sikorska 7 The magical human-animal or the monstrous female in Le Roman de Melusine .........................................................................................................  135

8

Contents

Part III  Interlinear Glosses Hans Sauer & Birgit Schwan 8 Aldred’s combinations with efne, eft and ymb: their status (wordformation, glossing device, or both), and their treatment in dictionaries .....  151 Michiko Ogura 9 How Free the Translation could be: Choices of Verb Forms in Lindisfarne and Rushworth Versions of the Gospels .................................  179 Yoshitaka Kozuka 10 Reconsideration of the Development of English Third Person Plural Pronouns: An Analysis of the Use of Personal and Demonstrative Pronouns in Old English Biblical Glosses .........................  197 Part IV  Syntax Michio Hosaka 11 Ambiguity between the BE Perfect and the BE Passive in Old English ........  217 Kousuke Kaita 12 Old English Magan: An Expression of Adhortative Wish .........................  239 Part V  Semantics and Lexicology Jane Roberts 13 Some thoughts about the Old English Weaving and Spinning terms ....  259 Magdalena Bator 14 The Language of the Early Culinary Instructions .......................................  273 Rafał Molencki 15 Why did people oust folk and lede? ................................................................  291 Part VI  Medievalism Oliver M. Traxel 16 Reviving a Past Language Stage: Modern Takes on Old English ..............  309 Contributors ............................................................................................................  329

List of Abbreviations Editions and Publications ASPR ASPR I ASPR II ASPR III ASPR IV ASPR V ASPR VI Beowulf EETS NRSV

The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records: a collective edition, eds. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie. 1931-1953. New York: Columbia UP. The Junius Manuscript, ed. George Philip Krapp, 1931. The Vercelli Book, ed. George Philip Krapp, 1932. The Exeter Book, eds. George Philip Krapp & Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, 1936 Beowulf and Judith, ed. Elliot van Kirk Dobbie. 1953 The Paris Psalter and the Meters of Boethius, ed. George Philip Krapp, 1932. The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliot van Kirk Dobbie. 1942. Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th edition, eds. Robert D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork & John D. Niles. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Early English Text Society; o.s. = original series; e.s. extra series; s.s. supplementary series New Revised Standard Version (Hendrickson Publishers, 1989)

Texts, Glosses and Manuscripts ÆLS see  LS AV The Authorized Version of the Bible, also called KJV Bo The Old English Boethius (King Alfred’s Boethius): Prose Passages; for the verse passages see Met CH Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies KJV King James Version of the Bible or King James Bible, also called AV Li The OE gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels: MS London, BL, Cotton Nero D. iv [http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?​ ref = cotton_ms_d_iv] LS Ælfric’s Lives of Saints Met The Old English Boethius (King Alfred’s Boethius): Verse Passages (The Metres f Boethius); for the prose passages see Bo PsGlA The OE gloss to the Vespasian Psalter: MS London, BL, Cotton Vespasian A.i PsGlD The OE gloss to the Royal Psalter: MS London, BL, Royal 2.B Ru1 Farman’s part of the OE gloss to the Rushworth Gospels: MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct[arium] D.2.19

10

List of Abbreviations

Ru2 Owun’s part of the OE gloss to the Rushwort Gospels WSCp The West-Saxon Gospels in MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 140 WSH The West-Saxon Gospels in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 38

Dictionaries and Corpora BT BTS BTSC ClHall DOE

DOEC DOEWC HC MED OED OED1  

OED2

An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, by Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1898 An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Supplement, by T. Northcote Toller. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1921. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Enlarged Addenda to the Supplement, by Alistair Campbell. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1972. [an electronic version is available, e.g., under ] A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, by John R. Clark Hall. 4th edition with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1960. [many reprints] Dictionary of Old English, eds. Angus Cameron, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey et al.; the most recent version: The Dictionary of Old English in Electronic Form A-H. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2017. The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, eds. Antonette DiPaolo Healey et al. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2009 . see DOEC Helsinki Corpus of English Texts Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn, John Reidy, Robert E. Lewis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952-2001; Available online:  The Oxford English Dictionary A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, ed. Sir James A.H. Murray, Henry Bradley, Sir William A. Craigie, Charles T. Onions. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1884-1928. Reprinted 1933 in 10 vols. with Supplement and Bibliography under the title The Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. in 20 vols., ed. John A. Simpson and Edmund S.C. Weiner. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989 [incorporates the Supplement in 4 vols. ed. Robert W. Burchfield, 1972-1986].

List of Abbreviations

OED3 YCOE

The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed. in progress, also known as the OEDonline. Available online: http:// www.oed.com or http://dictionary.oed.com The York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry, together with The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose

Biblical Books Mt Mk Lk Jn

11

Matthew (The Gospel according to Matthew) Mark (The Gospel according to Mark) Luke (The Gospel according to Luke) John (The Gospel according to John)

Languages IE Indo-European L Latin ME Middle English ModE Modern English ModHG Modern High German OE Old English OHG Old High German ON Old Norse

Other Abbreviations A.D. Anno Domini BL British Library ca. circa CP Complementizer Phrase ct. century DAT, dat. dative ed., eds. editor, editors e.g. exempli gratia (for example) et al. et alii (and others) f. feminine intr. intransitive m. masculine M modal auxiliary MV modal auxiliary followed by non-finite verb MS manuscript

12

List of Abbreviations

No number(s) NOM nominative n. neuter NPi Noun Phrase pl. plural PP past participle SC subject complement sg. singular ti trace tr. transitive UP University Press V (non-finite) verb VM non-finite verb followed by modal auxiliary vi verb intransitive PassiveP Passive Phrase VP verb phrase vt verb transitive

Maps and Pictures Maps: Map 1:  England .....................................................................................................  75 Map 2:  Northern England During the Roman Period .....................................  76 Map 3:  Lanchester and the River Browney ........................................................  76

Pictures: Figure 1:  Metaphorical Links among FIRE, SWORD, WARRIOR and MONSTER with Dragon at the center of the interrelation ���������  55 Figure 1: Text segmentation and identification in the DOEC. .....................  112 Figure 2: Extract from the textual information found on Medicina de quadrupedibus in the HC. �����������������������������������������������������������������  113 Figure 3: The beginning of Ælfric´s Homily for the First Sunday in Lent in XML (DOEC). ����������������������������������������������������������������������  113 Figure 4: Morphological annotation in the YCOE. ........................................  113 Figure 5: Syntactic parsing in the YCOE. ........................................................  115 Figure 6: Flow chart of the tasks of corpus compilation. ...............................  118 Figure 7: The database Nerthus. ........................................................................  120 Figure 8: The database Freya. ............................................................................  121 Figure 9: The lemmatiser Norna. ......................................................................  122 Figure 10: Database architecture, files and fields. .............................................  124 Figure 11: The static presentation. ......................................................................  124 Figure 12: The dynamic presentation. ................................................................  125 Figure 1: The Rise of Resultative Perfect in OE ...............................................  229 Figure 2: The Development of the BE+PP Construction ..............................  229 Figure 3: From Resultative Perfect to Dynamic Passive ................................  230 Figure 1: ABILITY & VOLITION (& Adhortative) .......................................  243 Figure 1: Diagram of Warp Weighted Loom. Based on a drawing in Walton Rogers (1997: 29, ­figure 2.21); from Petty (2014).  ����������  260 Figure 2: Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, 32 (Script. eccl. 484), f. 84r. To the right of Hezekiah's palace is a shelter beneath which four women are busy at weaving.  ���������������������������������������������������  262 Figure 3: Different types of weaving tablets. Artefacts owned by the National Museum of Scotland. See Petty (2014: 56, ­figure 21). ��  269 Figure 4: Tablet weaving. Drawing: Knudsen (2012: 254). ............................  270

Preface and Acknowledgements This volume is a collection of papers read at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in 2017; all papers were revised and updated for publication. The papers come from six sessions, namely two sessions organized by the Institute of English Studies (IES) at the University of London, and four sessions organized by the Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics (SHELL). We are grateful to Joyce Hill, Professor Emerita at the University of Leeds (and one of the founders of the IMC), and to Jane Roberts, Emeritus Professor, Institute of English Studies, University of London, for helping to set up those sessions. Our thanks are also due to Michio Hosaka, Professor at Nihon University, for his assistance in preparing the present volume for publication, and furthermore to Jacek Fisiak, Professor Emeritus at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Professor Fisiak has not only accepted this volume for publication in his series ‘Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature’ (SEMLL), but he has also been a constant supporter of SHELL since 2003, and he helped to make the fifth international conference of SHELL a part of the IMC sessions in 2017. The maps were designed by Vera Falck from the Geography Department of the University of Munich (LMU); we thank her and Prof. Wolfram Mauser, head of the same department, for their help. Our thanks are also due to our speakers who revised and submitted their papers on various aspects of Medieval English language, literature, culture, and literacy - ‘Language, Literature and Literacy’ actually was the theme of the sections organized by SHELL. The contributors come not only from Japan, but also from the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Poland, and Spain; this shows once more how international scholarship is and has always been. We have arranged the contributions into six groups, namely I) poetry; II) prose; III) interlinear glosses; IV) syntax; VI) semantics and lexicology; VII) medievalism. Whereas the papers in the groups dealing with poetry, interlinear glosses, and syntax concentrate on Old English, the groups dealing with prose and with semantics and lexicology contain papers on Old English and on Middle English. Medievalism reverses the perspective and looks on Old English (and Middle English) from the present. The contributors employ a wealth of different approaches, and the papers and the sections could therefore also have been arranged differently: the papers by Suzuki, Yamamoto, Ogura and Kaita, for example, analyse the use of modal auxiliaries; the papers by Sikorska and Traxel deal with modern perspectives on Medieval language and literature. The general theme of the IMC 2017 was ‘Otherness’;

16

Preface and Acknowledgements

the contributions that fit this theme particularly well are those by Watanabe (the dragon in Beowulf), by Hill (Ælfric quoting patristic authorities in order to defend Christian orthodoxy against errors and heresy), and by Sikorska (Melusine as a shape-shifter who only partly belongs to the human sphere) – but obviously we had to stick to one arrangement. Some of the contributions also show (especially those by Suzuki and Yamamoto) that even if two researchers deal with a similar topic, they often arrive at different conclusions. We have not tried to harmonize those but present them for further discussion. In the following we sketch the most important features of the contributions (or at least some of their most striking features).

I  Poetry 1. Boethius’s Latin De Consolatione Philosophiae contains prose and verse passages. In the Old English version the verse passages were apparently first translated into prose and later into verse; these two Old English versions of the same Latin passages give a unique opportunity to see how an Old English prose text was transformed into alliterative Old English poetry. Hironori Suzuki uses those two versions (and also the OE Genesis B) for an analysis of the word-order of main verbs (in the infinitive) and their accompanying modal auxiliaries, e.g. meahte asettan (with the modal preceding the main verb) and settan meahte (with the modal following the main verb). He shows that alliteration and the scope of the half-line boundary are important factors. 2. The phrase nacod nið-draca, literally ‘naked battle-dragon’ (Beowulf 2273)  is discussed by Hideki Watanabe. He connects the phrase with the concepts of ‘MONSTER, WARRIOR, SWORD, FIRE’, and he also lists 30 previous translations of this phrase (in the context of the numerous translations of Beowulf that have been published). 3. In the Battle of Brunanburh, which was fought in 937, the English king Athelstan defeated an army consisting of Scots, Strathclyders, and Vikings; his victory is celebrated in one of the poems inserted into the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The precise location of the battle has been much disputed, however. Andrew Breeze provides an extensive review of previous research. Elaborating upon a suggestion made by Alistair Campbell, he argues that the battle was fought at the river Browney (Brune) near Lanchester, County Durham.

II  Prose 4. From the beginning of his career, abbot Ælfric, the most famous Old English homilist, presented himself as an orthodox theologian, opposing writers that in his view spread errors and heresies. Joyce Hill analyses Ælfric’s letter to Archbishop

Preface and Acknowledgements

17

Sigeric, where Ælfric lists his patristic authorities, but with varying frequency and purpose – Augustine, Gregory and Bede figure more prominently than others. 5. Tomomori Yamamoto deals with a similar topic as Hironori Suzuki (see no. 1 above), namely the position of modal verbs in relation to the main verb in the infinitive, e.g. scealt forlætan (with the modal preceding the main verb) and forlætan scealt (with the modal following the main verb). His analysis is based on the Old English Boethius, where he compares the prose passages with the corresponding poetic passages, and he also takes the OE poems of the Junius manuscript into account. His results are: in the OE Boethius the modal verbs have been semantically weakened. Both in this text and in the poems of the Junius manuscript the construction ‘modal verb + main verb in the infinitive’ could be used as a metrical filler; OE poetry and prose show various stages of the grammaticalization of modal verbs in the history of English. 6. Javier Martín Arista presents a pilot parallel corpus of Old English, which will be expanded into a Parallel Corpus of Old English Prose – parallel in the sense that the Old English text will be accompanied by a translation into Modern English. He reviews previous research and corpora, and outlines how the Parallel Corpus of Old English Prose will be different from previous corpora and better in some respects. 7. Melusine is a shape-shifter, a fairy who appears as a woman but can also turn into a snake; she is part of the mythical origin of the French aristocratic house of Lusignan. Her story was quite popular in romances of the late Middle Ages, also in England. Liliana Sikorska looks at the story from a modern eco-critic point of view. In her analysis, Melusine’s final metamorphosis into a snake must have been a negative change (from a higher into a lower being) for a Medieval audience, whereas for a modern audience it could signify a positive change, namely becoming one with nature again.

III  Interlinear glosses Three contributions analyse aspects of the Old English (more specifically, Northumbrian) gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, which was entered by the priest Aldred around 950-970, probably in Chester-le-Street. 8. Aldred renders Latin combinations with co- usually by combinations with efne, combinations with re- usally by eft-, and combinations with circa- often with ymb. Hans Sauer and Birgit Schwan discuss the significance of those combinations. Aldred apparently wanted to imitate the structure of the Latin words and did not intend to create new Old English (or Northumbrian) words. Nevertheless his coinages can also be analysed from a word-formational point of view (are they compounds or

18

Preface and Acknowledgements

prefix-formations?). Moreover their representation in the dictionaries of Old English varies considerably – whereas the earlier dictionaries are very selective and omit many of the relevant formations, the DOE is much more comprehensive. 9. Michiko Ogura looks at another aspect of the OE gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels (as well as the gloss to the Rushworth Gospels), namely the use of modal auxiliaries in periphrastic constructions in order to render the future, the perfect or the subjunctive. Whereas the Latin text usually has a synthetic form (i.e. a verb with an inflectional ending), the OE gloss often uses an analytic (periphrastic) construction (i.e. a combination of modal auxiliary + main verb), e.g. for the passive. Sometimes Aldred employs a double gloss (as he does also in other cases), e.g. patiatur – geðolas ł scile ðoliga (with the periphrastic construction in the second position, which Aldred prefers), or iurauerit – wælla suerige ł … suerias (with the periphrastic construction in the first position, which is rarer). 10. A  third aspect of the Lindisfarne gloss (and some other OE interlinear glosses) is investigated by Yoshitaka Kozuka, namely the use of the personal and demonstrative pronouns. He contends that the usage shows Old Norse influence (which would not be surprising, given the fact that Northern England was an area where Norse influence was particularly strong). He also claims that the Lindisfarne gloss shows an early stage of the development of they as the third person plural pronoun, because Aldred, the glossator, often uses forms of the demonstrative pronoun (e.g. þæt, þā) instead of the personal pronoun (e.g. hit, hie).

IV  Syntax 11. Michio Hosaka discusses the ambiguity between the BE perfect and the BE passive in Old English, using examples from a variety of sources. He maintains that such ambiguity lurks in the periphrastic types of verb constructions used in OE, comparing them with the original expressions in Latin. It is also suggested how the BE+PP construction has changed through the history of English. 12. After a survey of commonly accepted OE adhortative constructions, in particular uton (we) + infinitive (e.g. Uton we tilian ‘Let us strive’), ModE let us + infinitive (e.g. Let us pray), Kousuke Kaita shows that some constructions of the type magan we + infinitive also have adhortative function, e.g. Magun we nun nemnan ‘Let us now tell’. He labels this usage ‘dynamic modality’, where ABILITY is merged with VOLITION.

V Semantics and Lexicology 13. Old English weaving and spinning terms are discussed by Jane Roberts, especially those that live on in Modern English - apart from the superordinate terms

Preface and Acknowledgements

19

weave and spin mentioned in her title, she also analyses a number of subordinate terms, e.g. weft, warp, spindle, distaff, yarn, thread. Moreover, she looks at the texts where these terms are employed and transmitted, especially the Psalter glosses and Riddles 35 and 56. 14. The vocabulary of Middle and Early Modern English culinary instructions (cookery recipes) is often regarded as being of a rather general nature. Magdalena Bator corrects this impression. She offers a detailed review of research and she also shows that cookery recipes often employ a certain amount of technical vocabulary, which was frequently borrowed from French. She distinguishes between several groups within the culinary vocabulary, namely (i) verbs indicating how to treat ingredients (with further subdivisions; e.g., boil; carve; fill); (ii) terms for measurements (e.g. ounce, dishful); (iii) names of dishes (with a fair amount of loan-words and loan-phrases, e.g. blanc manger; gourds in potage – probabably used by the cooks to impress their patrons); (iv) herbs and spices; (v) instruments and utensils. 15. In the course of Middle English, the native (Old English) words lede, thede and folk(s) were gradually replaced by the loan-word people. Rafał Molencki shows that this was a process that took several centuries to complete. Whereas lede and thede died out entirely (at least in Standard English), folk(s) was restricted to the colloquial register.

VI  Medievalism 16. Old English was not only used between roughly 450 and 1100, it is also employed by some contemporary authors. Oliver Traxel distinguishes between several forms of Modern Old English, especially (i) authentic Old English, (ii) neoOld English, (iii) pseudo-Old English, (iv) mock-Old English, (v) updated Old English, and (vi) Modern Anglo-Saxon poetry. Neo-Old English has been used, for example, extensively and consistently in translations of children’s books into Old English, and more sporadically in historical (or pseudo-historical) novels, films; there is even an Old English version of Wikipedia (Englisc Wikipædia). Modern Anglo-Saxon poetry is, e.g., represented by Seamus Heaney’s version of Beowulf. Summer 2018 Michiko Ogura Hans Sauer

Part I  Poetry

Hironori Suzuki

1  The composition of ‘auxiliary + main verb’ constructions in Old English poetry Abstract: This paper posits that alliteration and the scope of each half-line boundary are important factors in determining the orders of modal auxiliaries (M) and non-finite verbs (V) in OE poetry. The survey encompasses ten OE poems, with this study primarily investigating the verse and prose versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and Genesis B and its Old Saxon original.

1 Introduction The focus of this study is to analyze what factors primarily influence the composition of constructions with multiple predicates, especially the modal auxiliaries and main verbs of subordinate clauses in Old English poetry. Although the principles of Old English prose syntax are, on the whole, well established, few studies have focused on verse syntax. There seem to be two main reasons for this. Firstly, Old English poetry is generally considered to have been composed in loose syntax. Secondly, traditionally, metrists have debated keenly the intricacies of the metrical system, especially regarding the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables of the half-line. Thus, Sievers (1893) observed five main rhythmical types of verse, and Bliss (1967) enlarged the list to fifteen types. Russom (1987) rejected Sievers’s assignment of subtypes within his five types, instead listing twenty-five verse patterns. Momma (1997) argued for a much stricter prosodical syntax, challenging the famous syntactic laws of Kuhn (1933). However, even under Momma’s rules, there still seems to be much freedom, even apparent randomness, in the word order of the modal auxiliary (M) and non-finite verbs (V). According to Momma’s theory, stressed words can appear in any order, and detached unstressed elements can be placed either before or after stressed elements. Since both M and V can be either stressed or detached unstressed elements, both MV and VM orders can be generated, apparently pretty randomly. Another approach to the composition of Old English poetry is the oral-formulaic theory proposed by scholars such as Magoun (1953) and Fry (1967). A recent study along these lines is Ogura (2006), who investigated the Meters of Boethius and concluded that they are so formulaic as to fit the mould of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Again, within this formulaic theory, both orders can be

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Hironori Suzuki

found randomly, as in (1). In the quotations, modal auxiliaries are in boldface, and non-finite verbs are underlined.1 (1)  MV order  VM order

meahte asettan ‘could build’

(Met7 5b)

settan meahte ‘build could’

(Met7 10b)

Meanwhile, some scholars, such as Getty (2002), argue that instead it is verb forms based on metrical weight that dictate the word order. According to this theory, V2 syntax is favored by meter in the cases of monosyllabic verb forms or light-stemmed disyllabic forms of the verb. Conversely, V2 syntax is militated against by meter in the case of heavy-stemmed polysyllabic forms, as illustrated in (2). It should be noted that Getty’s classification of verb forms is based on metrical ‘heaviness’, in which light-stemmed disyllabic verb forms are treated the same as genuinely monosyllabic forms on the grounds that they might be subject to ‘resolution’, such as mage, magen, scyle, sculon, and wile. For convenience, though, following Donoghue (1987), it seems preferable to use the term ‘light auxiliaries’ for Getty’s monosyllabic or light-stemmed disyllabic forms, and ‘heavy auxiliaries’ for his heavy-stemmed polysyllabic forms. (2)

V2 (MV) order with Light Auxiliary (Monosyllabic Verb Form) Swa sceal man don (Beo 1534b) ‘So must [a]‌man do’ Non-V2 (VM) order with Heavy Auxiliary (Polysyllabic Verb Form) Beahordum leng wrym wohbogen  wealdan ne moste  (Beo 2826b-27) ‘No longer could [the] crooked dragon control [the] treasures’

Table  1 indicates the relationship between verb forms based on metrical weight and the order of the modal and main verbs in subordinate clauses in Beowulf. Although there is a slight tendency for ‘light auxiliaries’ to take the MV order, and for ‘heavy auxiliaries’ to take the VM order, which accounts for nearly 69  percent of the total occurrences, this result does not seem to demonstrate

1 The translations into Modern English throughout the study are all mine.

The composition of ‘auxiliary + main verb’

25

Table 1.  Metrical Weight and Position of Modal Auxiliaries (Subordinate Clauses) Beo Light auxiliaries Heavy auxiliaries Total

MV order 14 (56 %) 27(28 %) 41(33 %)

VM order 11 (44 %) 71 (72 %) 82 (67 %)

Total 25 98 123

X2 = 7.25; df = 1, p