Re: NATLANG: Re: German sibilants and consonant clusters.

Tristan Alexander McLeay skrev:
> On 20/06/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...> wrote stuff,
> and finished with:
>
>> NB that OHG and MHG orthography wasn't consistent WRT the
>> spellings of its sibilants and the affricate /ts/: _z_
>> served for both short /ts/ and short /s_a/, while the
>> long/geminate counterparts were _tz_ or _cz_ and _zz_ or
>> _sz_ respectively.  Modern scholars use a modified _z_
>> resembling the IPA [Z] character, U+0225 LATIN SMALL LETTER
>> Z WITH HOOK, for /s_a/ but in MHG this was only a graphic
>> variant of _z_ without special significance in Medieval
>> writing, but see <http://wiki.frath.net/Cedilla> for a
>> similar graphic variant used distinctively.  To confuse
>> matters more a graphically similar or identical form is used
>> for /G/ in some Old English grammars and editions!
>
>
> Others have picked you up on the Dutch, so... No phonemic voiced
> fricatives in OE.
No phonemic /v/ or /z/, but it is held by some that _g_
represented [G] even in initial position where
it did not represent [j], being [g] only in gemination and
after /n/.  This is in contrast to _b_ and _d_ which
represent stops in initial position.  For this reason they
choose to use /G/ for [g]/[G].  Hogg (1992)
<http://tinyurl.com/hbo9k> gives his reasons, but I'm not
convinced: in particular I think that [g] may well
palatalize to [j], as it did in Swedish and Norwegian.
Moreover initial _g_ clearly was [g] in ME.

> The graphically similar or identical form in edited
> OE is used for /j/ (whether it comes from *j or palatalised *g), and
> also in <cg> when it represents /jj/. [G] was a hard allophone of /g/
> i.e. if [G] was the surface form, then modern editions will use a
> plain, undotted, unyoghified <g>.
No, older editions use the yogh-type for all instances of
Old English _g_ simply because the Insular form of _g_ was
different from the Carolingian form, which is overkill since
normally Carolingian _g_ didn't occur in Old English text,
though it was used in Latin text written in the later part
of the OE period.

It is another matter that older Old English scholars used
yogh as a phone*ic symbol for [G].  While that may be
seen in grammars it is not seen in text editions, which
usually have one or the other form throughout.  This use
of special types to represent special Insular forms has
now been abandoned, for good or worse -- worse because
manuscript forms become more of a shock, especially the
similarity between _r_ and _s_, and between _p_ and _w_.
Insular _f_ and _g_ just look funny but are not hard to
identify.

> OTOH, in unedited ME works, yogh was used for /G/ and /j/, but not for
> /g/ or /dZ/ < /jj/, hence ME & edited OE are in contradiction WRT
> usage of yogh vs g. So really, it only adds to the fun!
Yes, but that's because Carolingian _g_ was introduced and
started to be used for /g/, while Insular _g_ was used for
/j/ or /x/.  This distinction is preserved in editions,
since it *is* a distinction, and not just a variation.

It may be that some editors have retrofitted
this into OE, but the general practice is to put a dot
over _c, g, sc_ (\u010B, \u0121, \u1E61) that represent
palatal values in OE.  Sometimes acutes are used on
_cg, gg, ng_ corresponding to /dZ/ or /ndZ/, but that
is strictly redundant.

I think you are confusing OE and ME scribal and
editorial practices, as well as editorial and
grammatical OE scholarly practice.

> --
> Tristan.
As for the Dutch *sk, my Sx was simply a typo:
I had written Sx as one stage of the German development
just before.  I'm human, you know.

--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

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