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

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. 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>.

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!

--
Tristan.

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