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expiratory, or force accent, but instead of being fixed and
conventional as is English word-stress, it is free and logical,
resting on the word or words to which we wish to call
special attention in the thought. The simple sentence can
he go? may represent three different ideas, as the sentence-
stress is placed on each of the three different words. Only
in poetry is sentence-stress somewhat conventionalized, as
it has been adapted to syllabic verse forms adopted from
the Romance nations.
295. The English word-accent in the oldest period did
not differ materially from the accent of Teutonic, ยง 31,
except perhaps that it tended to rest more commonly
on the root syllable. In nouns and adjectives, however,
the accent still rested on the prefix, and verbs derived from
them kept this initial stress. Thus answer, the substantive,
and the verb derived from it have always been accented on
the prefix. The noun ordeal, the only English word with the
prefix or- (German ur-), has also retained the accent on the
prefix from the earliest times. But the prefix mis-, for
example, although it bore the stress in Old English, no
longer retains it even in nouns, as misdeed. Examples of
native nouns with accent on the prefix are those compounded
with after, and, fore, fro, in, mid, off, on, out, over, under, up,
as in aftermath, answer, forepart, froward, inland, midway,
offspring, onslaught, outlay, overthrow, underling. There are
few verbs with these prefixes, but most of them accent the
root, as ingather, overthrow.
296. Foreign words entering English have sometimes
assumed the English accent, sometimes not. In general

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Publication Information: Book Title: The History of the English Language. Contributors: Oliver Farrar Emerson - author. Publisher: Macmillan. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1894. Page Number: 257.
    
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