Editing Alliterative verse (section)

====Rules for alliteration====
Alliteration fits naturally with the [[prosody (linguistics)|prosodic]] patterns of early Germanic languages. Alliteration essentially involves matching the left edges of stressed syllables. Early Germanic languages share a left-prominent prosodic pattern. In other words, stress falls on the root syllable of a word, which is normally the initial syllable (except where the root is preceded by an unstressed prefix, as in past participles, for example). This means that the first sound of a word was particularly salient to listeners.<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.1515/9783110643282-005 |chapter=First or best, last not least: Domain edges in the history of English |title=Studies in the History of the English Language VIII |date=2020 |last1=Minkova |first1=Donka |pages=109–134 |isbn=978-3-11-064328-2 |s2cid=234663337 }}</ref> Traditional Germanic verse had two particular rules about alliteration:

*All vowels alliterate with each other.<ref name="Donka Minkova 2003">{{harvnb|Minkova|2003|loc=ch. 4}}</ref> The precise reasons for this are debated. The most common, but not uniformly accepted, theory for vowel-alliteration is that words beginning with vowels all actually began with a [[glottal stop]] (as is still the case in some modern Germanic languages).<ref name="Donka Minkova 2003" />
*The consonant clusters ''st-'', ''sp-'' and ''sc-'' are treated as separate sounds (so ''st-'' only alliterates with ''st-'', not with ''s-'' or ''sp-'').<ref>{{harvnb|Minkova|2003|loc=chs. 5-7}}</ref>