Only three English diatones, outlaw, rebel, record, out of the current 235-item list in Hotta (2015), are on record prior to the seventeenth century; the latest record of diatonic outlaw is 1786 (Sherman 1975: 63). Whether this type of functional prosodic contrast was inherited or innovative is controversial. We revisit the Old English metrical evidence for functional stress-shifting and present new attestations of verb–noun pairs in Middle English verse in an effort to establish if the limited inherited stress-shifting model survives, and, if so, whether or how it accommodates the incoming loan vocabulary. The additional verse attestations support the idea of continuity, yet the scarcity of data falls short of statistical verifiability. A search into detailed lexicographical information for 1200–1550 reinforces the hypothesis of continuity by documenting the differential patterns of borrowing of nouns and verbs, prefixed and unprefixed. Taken together, these two sources endorse a proposal that in its earliest stages functional stress-shifting was predicated on prefixation, and that the ongoing conflict between prefixal defooting and Align-L (Root, PrWd) in ME is a necessary component of the diachronic account of English prosody.

在 Hotta（2015 年）目前的 235 项列表中，只有三个英语 diatones，outlaw，rebel，record ，在 17 世纪之前有记录；全音阶亡命之徒的最新记录是 1786 年（谢尔曼 1975：63）。这种功能韵律对比是继承的还是创新的，是有争议的。我们重新审视了功能性重音转移的古英语格律证据，并提出了中古英语诗歌中动词-名词对的新证明，以努力确定有限的遗传重音转移模型是否存在，如果存在，它是否或如何适应传入的贷款词汇。额外的经文证明支持连续性的想法，但数据的稀缺性不足以进行统计验证。对 1200 年至 1550 年的详细词典信息的搜索通过记录名词和动词（前缀和无前缀）借用的不同模式来加强连续性假设。综合起来，ME中的Align-L (Root, PrWd)是英语韵律历时说明的必要组成部分。