En réponse à Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:
>
> Maybe it happened earlier in Anglo-Norman than in some other
> varieties,
> but that
> {ch} did come into English as [tS] and not the [S] of later French
> must
> surely be
> evidence that deaffrication had not taken before 1066 :)
>
True enough.
> Indeed, I understood that deaffrication did not become until the middle
> of
> the 13th
> century; so even if Anglo-Norman began a bit earlier, this was still
> some
> time after
> the 11th cent.
>
Agreed.
> >
> > My book said that they were already dead in all dialects by the XIth
> > century
>
> Ah, but my book says that final [T] did not disappear until the XIth
> cent
> :)
>
Hehe, I'll keep on trusting my book, it has alredy proven to have very
trustworthy information in :)) .
>
> Maybe - but that only makes sense if we know that English /t/ was
> alveolar
> at that
> early period. As there was no way of recording sound at the time, we
> can
> only
> make intelligent guesses. One wonders what evidence your book gives
> for
> [T]
> and [D] having disappeared everywhere by the XIth cent.
Orthographic mistakes, forgotten final |t|s showing that it was not pronounced
anymore.
Also the
> Normans
> were,
> as their name shows, simply Vikings who had settled down in north
> France
> and
> become frenchified. Might not some early Norse habits have persisted?
> Might not,
> e.g. [T] and [D] persisted longer amongst them?
>
I don't know about that,but the book gives some particular information on Anglo-
Norman, so I guess I can trust it.
> Just ideas - I guess short of time travel we'll never know all the
> answers.
>
Indeed :(( . If ever someone manages to invent a time-travelling machine,
there's a big chance that the first passenger will be a linguist ;))) .
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.