Re: RV: Old English

Basileus haþ writen

> On Tue, 28 Mar 2000 16:48:15 +0100, yl-ruil <yl-ruil@...> wrote:
>
> >Basileus wrote:
>
> >> >> with a palatalizing effect of _sc_
> >>
> >> I meant the diphthong -ea-. PGerm /a/ ( + dental + back vowel) should
> >> yield WS /a/, shouldn't it? As in _talu_ ( > tale; sorry for possible
> >> misspelling, no references handy).
> >>
> >> The further change /a/ > <ea> may point to palatal quality of what was
> >> spelled <sc>, for it resembles /u/ > <eo> after /j/ in _geong_, etc.
> >
> >The fracture diphthong /æa/ "ea" normally derives from PGmc /au/,
contrast
> >German auch and OE eac.
:
> _scadu_ had a short vowel, as evidenced by ModE _shade_.
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.

> >In this case it is from u-mutation of the
> >following -w. This doesn't happen for talu because it derives from OS
> tala,
> >in turn from PGmc *talô.
>
> 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. 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.

> >
> >AFAIK (see! I used the acronym!) eo derives from high vowel + w as in
> *iwwis
> >> eow and *juwungaz > geong. Often the e of geong is not found, generally
> in
> >Mercian and other Anglian dialects, deriving from the contracted form of
> >*juwungaz, *jungaz.
>
> The PGerm form for 'young' is more commonly presented as *jungaz (or at
> least I cannot think of any evidence in favor of *juwungaz within Germanic
> langs).
*jungaz is the one which survived, *juwungaz is the earlier form, from PIE
*juwnk´ós, whence *jungaz by haplology.

> There are other examples of vowel fracturing after /j/, e. g. _geoc_
> 'yoke' ( = Joch, jugum, zygon, etc.).
Granted, cf geolu, yellow.

Dan