CHAPTER VII

THE METRICAL TREATMENT OF SYLLABLES

§ 95. General remarks on formative and inflexional syllables 151

96. Treatment of the unaccented _e_ of words of three

and four syllables in Middle English 152

97. Special remarks on individual inflexional endings 154

98. Treatment of _-en_ in Middle and Modern English 155

99. The comparative and superlative endings _-er_, _-est_ 156

100. The ending _-est_ 157

101. The endings _-eth_, _-es_ (_'s_) 158

102. The ending _-ed_ (_'d_, _t_) 158

103. The ending _-ed_ (_-od_, _-ud_) of the 1st and

3rd pers. sing. pret. and plur. pret. of weak verbs 159

104. The final _-e_ in Middle English poetry 160

105. Examples of the arbitrary use of final _-e_ 161

106. The final _-e_ in later poetry of the North 162

107. Formative endings of Romanic origin 163

108. Contraction of words ordinarily pronounced in full 165

109. Amalgamation of two syllables for metrical purposes 166

110. Examples of slurring or contraction 167

111. Other examples of contraction; apocopation 168

112. Lengthening of words for metrical purposes 169

A History of English Versification · 第 7 / 22 章