Contraction in Old English Beowulf

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This paper discusses contracted forms or what Zwicky (1977) terms `simple clitics' that are found in the Old English alliterative verse Beowulf. The most frequent is cliticization of the negative particle to the following verb, e.g. naes `not-was' (< ne naes), nis `not-is' (< ne is), nolde `not-would' (< ne wolde). Other examples include the verb-pronoun sequence wen'ic `think-I'(< wene ic), and the conjunction-particle sequence patte `that-which'(<paet pe) (cf. Klaeber 1950, Campbell 1959, Brunner 1965). The elements that may become simple clitics, i.e. the negative particle ne, the subject pronoun ic, and the relative particle pe, consistently occur in a metrically unstressed position. This fact indicates that lack of stress is a necessary condition for cliticization. In parallel with clitic phenomena in Present-day English, contraction in Beowulf tends to be observed with high frequency collocations and is subject to phonotactic factors (cf. Zwicky 1970, 1977, Selkirk 1984, Kaisse 1985, Bybee 2001). For example, the negative particle ne is cliticized to auxiliaries and auxiliary-like verbs that begin with a vowel, h, or w. Although there is some indication that full forms are more often stressed than the corresponding contracted forms (cf. Jack 1999), the factors which distinguish between the two are not entirely clear.
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