Re: RV: Old English

On Tiwesdæg, 28 Mar 2000 22:35:27 +0100, yl-ruil <yl-ruil@...>
gewrat:

<...>
>The diphthong ea was generally smoothed to a short /a/: eall > all, healf
>
>half, heall > hall, whereas éa /æ:a/ becomes (short) e:
>héafod > head, réad > red.
For some reason, OE had _heofod_ rather than _heafod_ (which would better
correspond to the forms of other Germanic langs). I am not sure if
the vowel length in _heofod_ is evidenced by the OE spellings; modern
spelling reflects Middle English open vowel which points rather to short
/eo/.

More normal was the development without shortening: _hear_, _ear_,
_beam_, _stream_, _east_, _beat_, etc.; the shortening in words that
end in <-ead> happened later, as evidenced by the spelling.

>> It seems to me that /a/ > /a/ (rather than /æ/) before any back vowel,
>> and therefore was not subject to fracturing by 'back umlaut' (which
>> happened later, didn't it?).
>
>Yes, but the _majority_ of texts have sceadu, which implies a fracture
>diphthong rather than a simple vowel.
Yes, and this is exactly what I tried to use as the evidence of an early
palatalization of <sc>. Fracturing of /a/ through back umlaut was chiefly
possible in dialects with 'second fronting'.

>Incedentally, fracturing can be pretty
>reasonably dated: it occured at the same time as the development of the
>Anglo-Frisian rune-row, since there is a seperate character (ear) for this
>diphthong.
Can you explain in more detail? I know too little about runes, and I
don't know what the term 'Anglo-Frisian rune-row' is usually applied to.

And there were several different processes that yielded short and
long <ea>.

>*jungaz is the one which survived, *juwungaz is the earlier form, from PIE
>*juwnk´ós, whence *jungaz by haplology.
Therefore, <eo> in _geong_ < /u/ rather than some diphthong. That is,
/ju/ > /jio/ > /jeo/ <geo> in WS.

>> There are other examples of vowel fracturing after /j/, e. g. _geoc_
>> 'yoke' ( = Joch, jugum, zygon, etc.).
>Granted, cf geolu, yellow.
No, <eo> in _geolu_ ( = German _gelb_) appeared due to back umlaut
(absent in this position in the dialect of London: modern _yellow_,
not *yollow). And the initial PGerm sound was not /j/.

>Dan

Basilius