Borrowing, Stress Shift and Word Order Change in the History of English

This paper claims that the well-known word order change in the history of English is caused by a major change in the stress system of English which is previously induced by borrowing from one of the Romance languages.Two probable scenarios are presented for the phonological change in question: (i) the stress system of English is influenced by that of Old French due to the borrowing of Old French words during the Middle English period; (ii) it is influenced by the stress system of Latin due to the borrowing of Latin words during the Early Modern English period.This paper also argues that the stress-based theory of linearization accepts both of the two scenarios, but favors the first over the second.