Re: Strangeness of U (was Re: CHAT behove etc (was: Natlag: Middle English imper

On 13/03/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:30:48 -0500, Joe <joe@...> wrote:
>
> > John Vertical wrote:
...
> >> I see. Final vocalic <ue> as in argue, true, blue etc. is presumably a
> >> later innovation?
> >>
> > I don't know.  Those are all following consonant clusters, where 've'
> > would be an impossible interpretation.
There are pairs like "twelve" "value", though. OTOH, it would've
highlighted the similarity between "solve" and "solution", "dissolve"
and "dissolution".

> I missed the beginning of this thread, but I've been checking in from time
> to time, and I could not keep my big mouth shut any longer. Forgive me if
> this has been covered...
>
> There was another purpose of "silent" E other than marking |u| -> /v/; it
> also marks Umlaut. Mack /mak/ vs make /mEjk/ (or at least those related
> classes of sounds) were, as far as I can tell, distinct even before the
> Great Vowel Shift(s). My gut says /mAk/ vs /mEk@/ in a fairly Germanoid
> way, but the gist is the same regardless of the exact mouth noises:
> etymologically, a following E caused a qualitative change in vowels, which
> needs to be marked even after the Umlaut itself stops being productive,
> for as long as that change manifests, and plausibly for longer to
> distinguish homophones etymologically. We could have gone with the umlaut
> diacritic (as indeed one of my spelling reforms did), but I suppose the
> English "we don't need none of that frilly stuff on *our* letters"
> attitude won out again, regardless of the fact that the silent E does the
> work of a diacritic these days.
You seem to misunderstand the Great Vowel Shift. The GVS saw the long
high vowels diphthongise, and the other long vowels shift up a notch
or two. It's nothing more special then that, so before the GVS, the
words "mat" and "mate" had generally similar vowels (tho at one stage
earlier still "mate" was disyllabic).

I'm not sure what dialect of English you speak (or if that even is
your native language), but if it's American English (like your email
address suggests), you might not realise just how distinct vowels that
differ only by length seem to speakers of a language which does. As a
speaker of Australian English, the vowels in pairs like "hut"~"heart",
"puss"~"pass" "bed"~"bared", "bid"~"beard", "full~"fool" (often) are
distinguished no more than by length (the latter in each pair being
long). So even tho they have the same quality, in no sense to the
native speaker of this dialect are they "not distinct". (Even when
speaking to a rhythm, Australians still manage to keep the sounds
distinct... I've heard that when Finnish is sung, long/short pairs are
neutralised, but I think with Australian English consonants after a
short vowel contribute to the time that vowel lasts for, but after a
long vowel, they don't, so the vowel of "hut" sung for a beat at 100
bpm will be shorter than "heart" sung for a beat at 100 bpm.  I think
also at least AusE music will prefer to put long vowels on long notes.
At least, that's what my intuition suggests, but in reality there
might be no distinction at all... Anyway, that might be an intresting
digression for conlangers, because I think the topic of music in tonal
langs has come up a few times, but not music in "quantatative" langs.)

Before the GVS, the distinction was predominately one of length.
That's why they were spelt so similarly. As in other Germanic
languages, a vowel was long in an open syllable, and short in a closed
one, at least orthographically. Probably, especially just before the
shift, there was also a distinction of quality, but it wouldn't've
been all that much. The system was somewhat like:

(fixed width font, please!)
iCe	   i:    iCC  I
ee    e:
eCe,  E:    eCC  E
 ea
aCe   a:    aCC  a
oCe,  O:    oCC  O
 oa
oo    o:
ou    u:    uCC  U
(columns one and three are orthography with C=consonant, columns two
and four are XSampa.)

Obviously there were other ways to spell things, and my use of e.g.
/a/ and /a:/ doesn't meant to imply that they *were* [a] and [a:], but
might've been instead [A] and [a:] as I believe happens in (some
dialects of) today's Dutch, or [a] and [A:] as I think happens in
(some dialects of) today's German. But they also could've been [a_"]
and [a_":] as in (some dialects of) today's English,* though the ME
/a/ and /a:/ were quite different from AusE /a/ and /a:/.

Additionally, there *was* an umlauting in previous versions of
English, and it remains visible in some irregular processes, like food
vs feed, long vs length, foot vs feet. Not all umlauted vowels in
German are spelt with umlauts; sometimes, <a>+uml does just correspond
to <e>.

* More specifically, Australian and New Zealand English. Phrased that
way for consistency, not to start yet another YAEPT thread.

--
Tristan.

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