Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

John:
> Joe scripsit:
>
> > He's right there.  I got confused by my(Yorkshire) grandfather saying
> > [In?l&v], 'in the lav' or 'in the toilet
>
> You know, this makes me wonder if "the" is actually the underlying
> morpheme.  In the conventional written form of Yorkshire dialect, this is
> written "in t'lav", as if /T/ > /t/.  But in fact the /t/ is realized as
> [?], suggesting that it is underlyingly at the end of a syllable
>
> Perhaps what we have here is a survival of the Gmc *neuter* demonstrative,
> generalized to all nouns, which surfaces as "it" in Frisian, "het" in
> Dutch, and (perhaps more relevantly, given the history of Yorkshire as
> part of the Danelaw) "et/ett" in Scandinavian languages.  In that case,
> "in 't lav" would be a better written form.  Normative OE is Southern
> and doesn't show this form with neuter nouns: instead we see 'tha:' > the
>
> Any takers?
I've no idea, but I don't find a derivation from _the_ particularly
odd. D > T > t > ? or D > d > t > ? are both natural chains of
development. Note, btw, that _to_ also is realized as [?] in these
dialects, which is counterevidence to your notion that article [?]
could not have originated in a syllable onset.

--And.