At 11:49 AM 10/19/03, d. collins wrote: >Which reminds me of a question I've always wanted to ask about: in a >Purcell piece (as published by Carus Verlag), the -ed of displeased has its >own note. Does this mean it was actually pronounced at the time? When did >the vocalic sound disappear?
I think it was relatively recent. There's plenty of poetry from 17th century or thereabouts in which the final "-ed" is pronounced as a separate syllable. It persists intermittently into some later verse. Typically, the "e" is usually marked with a grave accent to indicate the extra syllable, but I don't know whether the poets wrote it that way or it's a helpful addition added by a later editor. Two that come immediately to mind: To gild refinèd gold, to paint the lily, (Shakespeare, King John) But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near: (Marvell, To His Coy Mistress) 19th century poets (Keats, Tennyson, Whitman, etc) frequently use an apostrophe for a word in which the "-ed" is NOT an extra syllable, which suggests that pronouncing the extra syllable was still considered not unusual. -- At 8:49 AM 10/19/03, Christopher BJ Smith wrote: >It's still with us, in words like "naked" (unless you pronounce it >the way my daughter did when she was 7, to rhythm with "flaked.") But >most of them disappeared I would say at least 100 years ago, perhaps >more. "Naked" was never a past participle. A better example would be "learned", which preserves its two-syllable pronunciation as a participle but not as a verb. Likewise for "cursed", and probably a few others I can't think of right now. mdl _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
