| In this thesis I investigate aspects of the metrical behavior of finite verbs in Old English poetry. My approach is that of comparative, historical Indo-European linguistics. I discuss the metrical structure of the Old English poetic line (Chapter 2), and how verbs are positioned within that structure (Chapter 3), to explore possible parallels to the sentential accentuation of verbs in Greek and especially in Sanskrit.;The first chapter briefly presents the relevant Indo-European background; the evidence from Sanskrit, Greek and Germanic points to a generally light stress on verbs as opposed to other major lexical categories. Furthermore, Sanskrit and Germanic show a clear pattern whereby the verbs of dependent clauses are obligatorily stressed, while those of main clauses are not.;Although metrists have long assumed that the fourth lift, or stressed position in the line, is the weakest and the third, the strongest, the evidence for the relative weight of the lifts has not been examined in detail. Such an examination makes up the bulk of Chapter 2 of this thesis.;The third chapter provides further evidence for the correspondence between Sanskrit and Old English introduced in the first chapter. It also explores a number of other possible correspondences between these two languages with regard to the accentual patterning of the verb within the sentence.;I conclude in Chapter 4 with a brief defence of intonation as a possible influence on the syntactic history of Germanic, and finally with a summary of some of the major findings in the thesis. |
