Re: English questions

Thomas Leigh scripsit:

> > I assume (b) must have happened before (a), since e.g. /nixt/ had to
> have become /ni:t/ (loss of /x/ + compensatory lengthening) before the
> GVS in order for Modern English to have ended up with /najt/.
Quite right.  Of course in Scots the vowel is still short.

> (And while I'm at it, I know that the slashes / / are supposed to
> enclose phonetic representation, not phonemic representation, but I
> can't remember what you're supposed to put around the latter, so if
> anyone could remind me I'd be grateful.)
No, slashes do indeed enclose phonemic representation; square brackets
enclose phonetic representation.

> Also, does anyone know why Modern English ended up with /x/>/f/ in a
> few words (e.g. laugh, enough) rather than /x/ just dropping as it did
> in most words? Yes, I know that sentence was ungrammatical, but it's
> early and I can't figure out how to say it well. :)
It's idiosyncratic as far as anyone knows.  Another example, no longer
reflected in the spelling, is "dwarf".  (Hey, what do you want from
a language that has like 8 different outcomes of final /ux/ = "ough"?)

> I'd also be grateful for any recommendations for good sources of
> information (books, websites, anything) on the historical development
> of English. I've studied some Anglo-Saxon, and of course Modern English
> is my native language, but I'm really quite clueless about all the
> inbetween bits.
http://alpha.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/ is a wonderful site on the Great
Vowel Shift, including voices reading a text in various stages of it.

As for the unrounding of /y/, it must have been early in the Middle
English period; Chaucer shows /y/ only in French words spelled with "u",
if there; there is nothing to prove that [ju] was not already the
pronunciation.

--
With techies, I've generally found              John Cowan
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