Re: USAGE: OE pt was Re: USAGE:Yet another few questions about Welsh.

On Saturday, July 10, 2004, at 10:50 , David Barrow wrote:

> Even though 'Alfred' is a compound: Ælf- ræd?  Was this voicing a
> regular feature of OE? Did it happen to /s/ and /T/ as well?
Yes to both questions. As far we know, the fricatives were voiced between
voiced sounds,

> David Barrow
>
> Ray Brown wrote:
>
>>
>> Now, when the Normans took over and reformed (or deformed) our spelling,
>> you do find names like Alfred being written as Alvred (yes, the |f| was
>> voiced here in OE). The only trouble is that it wasn't till centuries
>> later that 'u' and 'v' were distinguished as separate letters. So the
>> poor old Alfred was likely to get his name misread as 'Alured'.
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On Sunday, July 11, 2004, at 02:26 , David Barrow wrote:

> Joe wrote:
[snip]
>> Well, it still happens to /T/.  But, yes, /s/ too.
>
> It happens with plurals after 'th'  baths, mouths, paths (though not in
> everybody's accent), with verbs.
That's because these forms have come down to us from OE via Middle English.

> But in 'paTHless', 'paTHmark',
> ruTHless, claSSroom, staFFroom?
These are modern compounds. The difference is important. In OE the voiced
& unvoiced fricatives were allophones conditioned by their environment. In
modern English /f/ and /v/ are separate phonemes, likewise /T/ and /D/,
and /s/ and /z/. Except in the traditional, now irregular, forms (i.e.
plurals and verbs) we no longer have these environmentally conditioned
allophones, so when we add the two morphemes /paT/ + /lEs/ there is no in
modern English to trigger the voicing of /pat/.

BTW I wrote /paT/ because its the normal pronunciation in much of Britain
and seems a suitable compromise between the /pAT/ of RP of south-east
England and /p&T/ of America   :)

>  My question is about voicing of /f/,
> /s/ /T/ in OE when there's  compounding:  'forþbrengan', 'eorþbyrig',
> 'lufrædan' and whether it was regular.
It was, and the voicing would be regular for the reasons I've given.

Ray
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