Concerning Stress Placement In Sindarin

In Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien gives the following description of stress in Eldarin languages:

In words of two syllables [the stress] falls in practically all cases on the first syllable. In longer words it falls on the last syllable but one, where that contains a long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by two (or more) consonants. Where the last syllable but one contains (as often) a short vowel followed by only one (or no) consonant, the stress falls on the syllable before it, the third from the end.

An elegant system, to be sure! But Tolkien himself seems to have contradicted this description in a few places, and therefore I think the subject of stress in elvish languages merits closer study than the Appendices will support.

The contradictory examples are the Sindarin place-names Imladris, that is Rivendell, and Nargothrond, the stronghold of Finrod. If the Appendices are taken at their word, these should be stressed imlAdris, nargOthrond, since the next-to-last syllable has two following consonants. However, these names are found in verses whose meter makes it clear that they are stressed on the initial syllable:

Boromir’s poem at the Council of Elrond:

Seek for the Sword that was broken: In Imladris it dwells[...] (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 259)

Gimli’s song in Moria:

The world was fair, the mountains tall, In Elder Days before the fall Of mighty kings in Nargothrond And Gondolin, who now beyond The Western Seas have passed away: The world was fair in Durin’s Day. (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 330)

A recording of Tolkien reading a fragment of the latter poem confirms the stress placement beyond doubt; that recording can be found here (click on Nargothrond in the list). The metrical evidence for initial stress in Imladris may be strengthened by the observation that Tolkien could have substituted Rivendell for Imladris without marring the meaning of the poem, if he found the stress of the Sindarin word unsuited.

If we accept that Imladris and Nargothrond are counterexamples to the stress rules in Appendix E, we are left with the question of why their stress is exceptional. Fortunately, a theory is ready at hand.

Analogy with Latin

Latin was one of Tolkien’s favorite languages, and it seems to have inspired the stress rule common to Sindarin and Quenya. In fact, Latin stress patterns follow the rule in Appendix E almost exactly, with one important exception: the muta cum liquida rule.

This phrase is Latin for stop with liquid, referring to consonant clusters formed of a stop (T, P, K, D, B, or G) and a liquid (L or R) in that order. When one of these clusters followed the second-to-last vowel in a word, the stress did not normally fall on that vowel. There is a deeper underlying reason for this pattern, whose explanation requires a slight digression.

The Latin Muta cum Liquida Rule

To understand the Latin stress rule, we first need to understand how words are divided into syllables. The general rule for finding syllable breaks in Latin is that consonant clusters should be broken up. Where this causes a syllable to end in a consonant, that syllable becomes long by position (as opposed to long by nature, i.e. having a long vowel or diphthong). The second-to-last syllable is stressed if it is long, whether by position or by nature.

Here’s the catch: muta cum liquida clusters are not broken up into separate syllables, so they don’t lengthen the preceding syllable. A word like tenebrae would thus be syllabified and stressed te·ne·brae.

The further underlying reason for this is that stop+liquid clusters can begin a syllable in Latin (as evidenced by the many words that begin with such clusters), while other clusters cannot. Thus, these other clusters must be broken up, while stop+liquid clusters can remain.

There’s one more layer of complication: in poetry, stop+liquid clusters can make the previous syllable long to fit the meter of the poem.

Applying the Rule to Sindarin

Now let’s see how we can apply the logic behind the Latin muta cum liquida rule to Sindarin. The first thing to note is that the Sindarin equivalent of the rule need not apply strictly to stop+liquid clusters, since Sindarin syllables can also begin with fricative+liquid clusters like thr: e.g. Thranduil. Thus, Nargothrond could be syllabified and stressed Nar·go·thrond. Imladris has a stop+liquid cluster dr: Im·la·dris.

As in Latin, the Sindarin muta cum liquida rule must be somewhat flexible (if it in fact exists). Some words like silivren (in the Hymn to Elbereth) and Thangorodrim show penultimate stress.

Proving the Rule

Here I use proof not in its formal mathematical sense, but in its everyday sense. Just as a thing is bulletproof if it can withstand gunfire, the proof of the muta cum liquida theory must be in its ability to survive the consideration of new evidence.

Of course, this type of proof is not absolute. There is always the possibility that new evidence could come to light that would disprove a theory, no matter how much evidence has been amassed that agrees with it. This particular theory might be disproved if:

• A Tolkien manuscript comes to light explaining the abnormal stress of Nargothrond and Imladris without referring to a muta cum liquida rule.
• A large body of Tolkien poetry is found in which many polysyllabic words with no muta cum liquida cluster are stressed abnormally. This would show that Tolkien often bent his own stress rules regardless of the shape of the word, weakening the case for a specific muta cum liquida rule.
• A Tolkien manuscript surfaces stating explicitly that Sindarin has no muta cum liquida rule and that the stress rules in Appendix E are absolute. This would be the least satisfying of the possible refutations, since it would mean that we would either have to disobey the new edict when reading Tolkien’s poems, or else stumble over awkwardly-stressed words.

So far, though, the evidence from outside LotR seems to support the muta cum liquida theory. After writing the first draft of this essay, I discovered that there were more muta cum liquida examples in The Lay of Leithian, among them many more occurrences of Nargothrond with initial stress, as well as new examples: Menegroth and possibly Orodreth. The evidence from the Lay is analyzed here by people more knowledgeable than I in matters of poetry, so I won’t attempt to redo their work.

The sequence of events leading to this essay was fortunate. If I had seen the evidence from the Lay before theorizing a Sindarin muta cum liquida rule, I would not be as confident in the theory. But now I know that the muta cum liquida rule can be inferred from only part of the existing evidence, which means the totality of the evidence is more than the minimum necessary to inspire the theory. Thus we can be confident that the theory does not overfit the data. It has the power to explain evidence that was not involved in its construction.

Other possibilities

Nevertheless, we must consider the possibility that when The Return of the King was published, Tolkien had no muta cum liquida rule in mind for Sindarin. For the fact remains that the description of Eldarin stress in the Appendices does not mention such a rule.

It may be significant that all of the evidence for muta cum liquida is drawn from the earliest parts of The Lord of the Rings and from the Lay of Leithian which predated it. Tolkien was constantly revising his thoughts on the languages, and it may be that in writing the Appendices he overlooked the muta cum liquida examples in the poems he’d written years earlier. The Lay of Leithian wasn’t published during Tolkien’s lifetime, so he probably wouldn’t have considered it when deciding which stress rules to immortalize in print.

If anyone had called attention to the discrepancy between the Appendices and the poems in The Fellowship of the Ring, there are three fairly obvious ways Tolkien could have resolved it:

• He could provide a historical reason for why Imladris and Nargothrond show abnormal stress. Nargothrond would be easier to explain because it is not pure Classical Sindarin. Tolkien lists it among ancient names derived from an older period (Appendix E) to explain why it doesn’t show the usual change of final nd to n. It would be a natural extension of this to exempt it from the normal stress patterns.
• He could revise the stress rule in Appendix E to include a muta cum liquida clause.
• He could say that Sindarin names used in English poems do not have to follow the normal stress rules of Sindarin. However, I think this the least likely possibility. The Lord of the Rings is itself an English text peppered with Sindarin names, and these names are not anglicized in any way. The inclusion of the pronunciation rules in Appendix E seems rather to indicate that Tolkien wanted to keep these names distinctly Elvish and to contrast them with the surrounding English text.

There’s no way to tell for sure which of these approaches Tolkien would have preferred. Since he knew Latin, he must have at least considered a muta cum liquida rule for Sindarin, so maybe he’d lean toward that option. On the other hand, he might have preferred to keep the published stress rule and simply make an exception for the two words that contradict it.

Conclusions?

Unfortunately, this essay must end with a whimper and not a bang. I can’t offer any conclusions more firm than maybe Tolkien considered a muta cum liquida rule for Sindarin; make of that what you will. I have presented the evidence; the interpretation is up to your discretion. I personally will always stress Imladris and Nargothrond on the first syllable, and will likewise continue to indulge in pronouncing the name of this website Menegroth. Until more evidence comes to light, I don’t feel completely confident in generalizing further.

Other Resources

After writing the initial version of this article, I discovered that neither my observations nor my derivation of a muta cum liquida rule were original to me. Following is a list of those who beat me to the punch:

• A 2012 discussion on mildred_of_midgard’s blog (also linked above) mentions Nargothrond as possible evidence of a Sindarin muta cum liquida rule, also bringing in evidence from the Lay of Leithian.
• In a 2003 discussion on the Conlang mailing list, Pavel Iosad and John Cowan discussed the metrical evidence for a revised Sindarin stress rule.