§33] Accentuation 15 Germanic language, the chief accent of a word became confined to the first syllable. This confining of the chief accent to the first syllable was the cause of the great weakening—and eventual loss—which the vowels underwent in unaccented syllables in the prehistoric period of the individual Germanic languages (Ch, V). And the extent to which the weakening of unaccented syllables has been carried in some of the Modern Germanic dialects is well illustrated by such sentences as: as et it 01930, / shall have it in the morning; ast 3 đunt if id kud, / should have done it if I had been able (West Yorks.). § 33. The rule for the accentuation of uncompounded words is the same in Gothic as in the oldest period of the other Germanic languages, viz. the chief stress fell upon the first syllable, and always remained there even when suffixes and inflexional endings followed it, as áuđags, blessed; niman, to take ; reikinōn, to ru/e ; the preterite of reduplicated verbs, as laílōt: lētan, to let; haíháit: háitan, to call; blindamma (masc. dat. sing.), blind; dagos, days; gumanē, of men; nimanda, they are taken; barnilō, little child; bērusjōs, parents; brōþrahans, brethren; dalaþrō, front beneath; dáubiþa, deafness; mannisks, human; þiuđinassus, kingdom ; waldufni, power. The position of the secondary stress in trisyllabic and polysyllabic words fluctuated in Gothic, and with the present state of our knowledge of the subject it is impossible to formulate any hard and fast rules concerning it In compound words it is necessary to distinguish between compounds whose second element is a noun or an adjective, and those whose second element is a verb. In the former case the first element had the chief accent in the parent Indg. language; in the latter case the first element had or had not the chief accent according to the position of the verb in the sentence. But already in prim. Germanic the second element of compound verbs nearly always had