Stress Assignment Rules for Old English (Poetry)

Abstract

The present paper presents a grid-based analysis of Old English stress rules for Old English poetry. based on metrical evidence. It addresses conflicting theories of and lack of uniformity in, scansion, arising from lack of rule-governed word stress principles to he based upon. Therefore. for correct and uniform scansion of a given half-line word stress rules should be determined first and th en applied to the words constituting the ha lf-line . and finally. the resulting linguistic stress pattern should be matched to a verse type.